A lane management system for operating an automated vehicle includes a navigation-device, a vehicle-detector, and a controller suitable for use on a host-vehicle. The navigation-device is used to determine a preferred-route to a destination of the host-vehicle. The vehicle-detector is used to determine a relative-location of an other-vehicle proximate to the host-vehicle. The controller is in communication with the navigation-device and the vehicle-detector. The controller is configured to determine an alternate-route when the relative-location is such that a preferred-lane of the preferred-route is obstructed whereby the host-vehicle is unable to follow the preferred-route. Alternatively, the controller is configured to determine an initiate-time to perform a lane-change necessary to maneuver the host-vehicle into a preferred-lane of the preferred-route so the host-vehicle can follow the preferred-route, wherein the initiate-time is determined based on the relative-location.

In one embodiment, instead of using map data, a relative coordinate system is utilized to assist perception of the driving environment surrounding an ADV for some driving situations. One of such driving situations is driving on a highway. Typically, a highway has fewer intersections and exits. The relative coordinate system is utilized based on the relative lane configuration and relative obstacle information to control the ADV to simply follow the lane and avoid potential collision with any obstacles discovered within the road, without having to use map data. Once the relative lane configuration and obstacle information have been determined, regular path and speed planning and optimization can be performed to generate a trajectory to drive the ADV. Such a perception system is referred to as a relative perception system based on a relative coordinate system.

A system and method for providing probabilistic-based lane-change decision making and motion planning that include receiving data associated with a roadway environment of an ego vehicle. The system and method also include performing gap analysis to determine at least one gap between neighboring vehicles that are traveling within the target lane to filter out an optimal merging entrance for the ego vehicle to merge into the target lane and determining a probability value associated with an intention of a driver of a following neighboring vehicle to yield to allow the ego vehicle to merge into the target lane. The system and method further include controlling the ego vehicle to autonomously continue traveling within the current lane or autonomously merge from current lane to the target lane based on at least one of: if the optimal merging entrance is filtered out and if the probability value indicates an intention of the driver to yield.

Systems and methods for providing navigation to a vehicle may include receiving observation data from one or more sensors of the vehicle, generating projection data corresponding to the one or more traffic participants based on the observation data for each time step within a time period, and predicting interactions between the vehicle, the one or more traffic participants, and the one or more obstacles, based on the projection data of the one or more traffic participants. The systems and methods may further include determining a set of actions by the vehicle corresponding to a probability of the vehicle safely arriving at a target location based on the predicted interactions, and selecting one or more actions from the set of actions and provide the one or more actions to a navigation system of the vehicle, wherein the navigation system uses the navigation data to provide navigation instructions to the vehicle.

Autonomous vehicle interactive decision making may include identifying two or more traffic participants and gaps between the traffic participants, selecting a gap and identifying a traffic participant based on a coarse probability of a successful merge between the autonomous vehicle and a corresponding traffic participant, generating an intention prediction associated with the identified traffic participant based on vehicle dynamics of the identified traffic participant, predicted behavior of the identified traffic participant in the absence of the autonomous vehicle, and predicted behavior of the identified traffic participant in the presence of the autonomous vehicle making a maneuver creating an interaction between the identified traffic participant and the autonomous vehicle, generating an intention prediction associated with the autonomous vehicle, calculating an updated probability of a successful interaction between the identified traffic participant and the autonomous vehicle based on the intention prediction associated with the identified traffic participant and the autonomous vehicle.

In various embodiments, methods, systems, and vehicles are provided for executing a lane change for a host vehicle. In various embodiments, one or more sensors obtain sensor data pertaining to target vehicles in proximity to the host vehicle; and a processor at least facilitates: obtaining, using the sensor data, predictions as to future positions and movement of the target vehicle; identifying a plurality of gaps through which the host vehicle may accomplish the lane change, based on the predictions; calculating a cost for each of the plurality of gaps; selecting, a selected gap of the plurality of gaps, having a minimized cost; and executing the lane change for the host vehicle via the selected gap.

A method determines one or more lanes of a road in an environment of a vehicle, by receiving a plurality of objects in the environment of the vehicle; receiving a plurality of trajectories of the plurality of objects in the environment of the vehicle; estimating a shape of a road based on the plurality of trajectories of the plurality of objects; and determining one or more lanes of the road using the estimated shape of the road and the plurality of objects and/or the plurality of trajectories of the plurality of objects.

Systems, devices, products, apparatuses, and/or methods for generating a driving path for an autonomous vehicle on a roadway by determining one or more prior probability distributions of one or more motion paths for one or more objects that have previously moved in a geographic location and/or for controlling travel of an autonomous vehicle on a roadway by predicting movement of a detected object according to one or more prior probability distributions of one or more motion paths for one or more objects that have previously moved in a geographic location.

A system and method for completing continual multi-agent trajectory forecasting with a graph-based conditional generative memory system that include receiving data associated with a surrounding location of an ego agent and inputting the data associated with the surrounding location of the ego agent to at least one episodic memory buffer and processing scene graphs associated with the surrounding location of the ego agent that are associated with the plurality of time steps. The system and method additionally include aggregating the data associated with the surrounding location of the ego agent associated with the plurality of time steps into mixed data and training a generative memory and a predictor with the mixed data. The system and method further include predicting future trajectories associated with traffic agents that are located within the surrounding location of the ego agent based on the training of the generative memory and the predictor.

Systems and methods for improved vehicle-to-vehicle communications are provided. A system can obtain sensor data depicting its surrounding environment and input the sensor data (or processed sensor data) to a machine-learned model to perceive its surrounding environment based on its location within the environment. The machine-learned model can generate an intermediate environmental representation that encodes features within the surrounding environment. The system can receive a number of different intermediate environmental representations and corresponding locations from various other systems, aggregate the representations based on the corresponding locations, and perceive its surrounding environment based on the aggregated representations. The system can determine relative poses between the each of the systems and an absolute pose for each system based on the representations. Each representation can be aggregated based on the relative or absolute poses of each system and weighted according to an estimated accuracy of the location corresponding to the representation.