Autonomous Vehicles’ Car-Following Drivability Evaluation Based on Driving Behavior Spectrum Reference Model

Author(s):  
Xiao Qi ◽  
Ying Ni ◽  
Yiming Xu ◽  
Ye Tian ◽  
Junhua Wang ◽  
...  

A large portion of the accidents involving autonomous vehicles (AVs) are not caused by the functionality of AV, but rather because of human intervention, since AVs’ driving behavior was not properly understood by human drivers. Such misunderstanding leads to dangerous situations during interaction between AV and human-driven vehicle (HV). However, few researches considered HV-AV interaction safety in AV safety evaluation processes. One of the solutions is to let AV mimic a normal HV’s driving behavior so as to avoid misunderstanding to the most extent. Therefore, to evaluate the differences of driving behaviors between existing AV and HV is necessary. DRIVABILITY is defined in this study to characterize the similarity between AV’s driving behaviors and expected behaviors by human drivers. A driving behavior spectrum reference model built based on human drivers’ behaviors is proposed to evaluate AVs’ car-following drivability. The indicator of the desired reaction time (DRT) is proposed to characterize the car-following drivability. Relative entropy between the DRT distribution of AV and that of the entire human driver population are used to quantify the differences between driving behaviors. A human driver behavior spectrum was configured based on naturalistic driving data by human drivers collected in Shanghai, China. It is observed in the numerical test that amongst all three types of preset AVs in the well-received simulation package VTD, the brisk AV emulates a normal human driver to the most extent (ranking at 55th percentile), while the default AV and the comfortable AV rank at 35th and 8th percentile, respectively.

Author(s):  
Yalda Rahmati ◽  
Mohammadreza Khajeh Hosseini ◽  
Alireza Talebpour ◽  
Benjamin Swain ◽  
Christopher Nelson

Despite numerous studies on general human–robot interactions, in the context of transportation, automated vehicle (AV)–human driver interaction is not a well-studied subject. These vehicles have fundamentally different decision-making logic compared with human drivers and the driving interactions between AVs and humans can potentially change traffic flow dynamics. Accordingly, through an experimental study, this paper investigates whether there is a difference between human–human and human–AV interactions on the road. This study focuses on car-following behavior and conducted several car-following experiments utilizing Texas A&M University’s automated Chevy Bolt. Utilizing NGSIM US-101 dataset, two scenarios for a platoon of three vehicles were considered. For both scenarios, the leader of the platoon follows a series of speed profiles extracted from the NGSIM dataset. The second vehicle in the platoon can be either another human-driven vehicle (scenario A) or an AV (scenario B). Data is collected from the third vehicle in the platoon to characterize the changes in driving behavior when following an AV. A data-driven and a model-based approach were used to identify possible changes in driving behavior from scenario A to scenario B. The findings suggested there is a statistically significant difference between human drivers’ behavior in these two scenarios and human drivers felt more comfortable following the AV. Simulation results also revealed the importance of capturing these changes in human behavior in microscopic simulation models of mixed driving environments.


Smart Cities ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 314-335
Author(s):  
Hafiz Usman Ahmed ◽  
Ying Huang ◽  
Pan Lu

The platform of a microscopic traffic simulation provides an opportunity to study the driving behavior of vehicles on a roadway system. Compared to traditional conventional cars with human drivers, the car-following behaviors of autonomous vehicles (AVs) and connected autonomous vehicles (CAVs) would be quite different and hence require additional modeling efforts. This paper presents a thorough review of the literature on the car-following models used in prevalent micro-simulation tools for vehicles with both human and robot drivers. Specifically, the car-following logics such as the Wiedemann model and adaptive cruise control technology were reviewed based on the vehicle’s dynamic behavior and driving environments. In addition, some of the more recent “AV-ready (autonomous vehicles ready) tools” in micro-simulation platforms are also discussed in this paper.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abtine Tavassoli ◽  
Niccolo Cymbalist ◽  
Amber Dunning ◽  
David Krauss

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Yanning Zhang ◽  
Zhongyin Guo ◽  
Zhi Sun

Driving simulation is an efficient, safe, and data-collection-friendly method to examine driving behavior in a controlled environment. However, the validity of a driving simulator is inconsistent when the type of the driving simulator or the driving scenario is different. The purpose of this research is to verify driving simulator validity in driving behavior research in work zones. A field experiment and a corresponding simulation experiment were conducted to collect behavioral data. Indicators such as speed, car-following distance, and reaction delay time were chosen to examine the absolute and relative validity of the driving simulator. In particular, a survival analysis method was proposed in this research to examine the validity of reaction delay time. The result indicates the following: (1) most indicators are valid in driving behavior research in the work zone. For example, spot speed, car-following distance, headway, and reaction delay time show absolute validity. (2) Standard deviation of the car-following distance shows relative validity. Consistent with previous researches, some driving behaviors appear to be more aggressive in the simulation environment.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vahid Balali ◽  
Arash Tavakoli ◽  
Arsalan Heydarian

Studies have indicated that emotions can significantly be influenced by environmental factors; these factors can also significantly influence drivers’ emotional state and, accordingly, their driving behavior. Furthermore, as the demand for autonomous vehicles is expected to significantly increase within the next decade, a proper understanding of drivers’/passengers’ emotions, behavior, and preferences will be needed in order to create an acceptable level of trust with humans. This paper proposes a novel semi-automated approach for understanding the effect of environmental factors on drivers’ emotions and behavioral changes through a naturalistic driving study. This setup includes a frontal road and facial camera, a smart watch for tracking physiological measurements, and a Controller Area Network (CAN) serial data logger. The results suggest that the driver’s affect is highly influenced by the type of road and the weather conditions, which have the potential to change driving behaviors. For instance, when the research defines emotional metrics as valence and engagement, results reveal there exist significant differences between human emotion in different weather conditions and road types. Participants’ engagement was higher in rainy and clear weather compared to cloudy weather. More-over, engagement was higher on city streets and highways compared to one-lane roads and two-lane highways.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Jie Hu ◽  
Sheng Luo

The modeling of car-following behavior is an attractive research topic in traffic simulation and intelligent transportation. The driver plays an important role in car following but is ignored by most car-following models. This paper presents a novel car-following driver model, which can retain aspects of human driving styles. First, simulated car-following data are generated by using the speed control driver model and the real-world driving behavior data if the real-world car-following data are not available. Then, the car-following driver model is established by imitating human driving maneuver during real-world car following. This is accomplished by using a neural network-based learning control paradigm and car-following data. Finally, the FTP-72 driving cycle is borrowed as the speed profile of the leading vehicle for the model test. The driving style is quantitatively analyzed by AESD. The results show that the proposed car-following driver model is capable of retaining the naturalistic driving styles while well accomplishing the car-following task with the error of relative distance mostly less than 5 meters for every driving styles.


2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-36
Author(s):  
Pengwei Wang ◽  
Song Gao ◽  
Liang Li ◽  
Shuo Cheng ◽  
Hailan Zhao

Autonomous driving vehicle could increase driving efficiency, reduce traffic congestion and improve driving safety, it is considered as the solution of current traffic problems. Decision making systems for autonomous driving vehicles have significant effects on driving performance. The performance of decision making system is affected by its framework and decision making model. In real traffic scenarios, the driving condition of autonomous driving vehicle faced is random and time-varying, the performance of current decision making system is unable to meet the full scene autonomous driving requirements. For autonomous driving vehicle, the division between different driving behaviors needs clear boundary conditions. Typically, in lane change scenario, multiple reasonable driving behavior choices cause conflict of driving state. The fundamental cause of conflict lies in overlapping boundary conditions. To design a decision making system for autonomous driving vehicles, firstly, based on the decomposition of human driver operation process, five basic driving behavior modes are constructed, a driving behavior decision making framework for autonomous driving vehicle based on finite state machine is proposed. Then, to achieve lane change decision making for autonomous driving vehicle, lane change behavior characteristics of human driver lane change maneuver are analyzed and extracted. Based on the analysis, multiple attributes such as driving efficiency and safety are considered, all attributes benefits are quantified and the driving behavior benefit evaluation model is established. By evaluating the benefits of all alternative driving behaviors, the optimal driving behavior for current driving scenario is output. Finally, to verify the performances of the proposed decision making model, a series of real vehicle tests are implemented in different scenarios, the real time performance, effectiveness, and feasibility performance of the proposed method is accessed. The results show that the proposed driving behavior decision making model has good feasibility, real-time performance and multi-choice filtering performance in dynamic traffic scenarios.


Author(s):  
Li Zhao ◽  
Laurence Rilett ◽  
Mm Shakiul Haque

This paper develops a methodology for simultaneously modeling lane-changing and car-following behavior of automated vehicles on freeways. Naturalistic driving data from the Safety Pilot Model Deployment (SPMD) program are used. First, a framework to process the SPMD data is proposed using various data analytics techniques including data fusion, data mining, and machine learning. Second, pairs of automated host vehicle and their corresponding front vehicle are identified along with their lane-change and car-following relationship data. Using these data, a lane-changing-based car-following (LCCF) model, which explicitly considers lane-change and car-following behavior simultaneously, is developed. The LCCF model is based on Gaussian-mixture-based hidden Markov model theory and is disaggregated into two processes: LCCF association and LCCF dissociation. These categories are based on the result of the lane change. The overall goal is to predict a driver’s lane-change intention using the LCCF model. Results show that the model can predict the lane-change event in the order of 0.6 to 1.3 s before the moment of the vehicle body across the lane boundary. In addition, the execution times of lane-change maneuvers average between 0.55 and 0.86 s. The LCCF model allows the intention time and execution time of driver’s lane-change behavior to be forecast, which will help to develop better advanced driver assistance systems for vehicle controls with respect to lane-change and car-following warning functions.


2021 ◽  
Vol 152 ◽  
pp. 105986
Author(s):  
Sara A. Freed ◽  
Lesley A. Ross ◽  
Alyssa A. Gamaldo ◽  
Despina Stavrinos

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 77
Author(s):  
Yitong Gan ◽  
Hongchao Fan ◽  
Wei Jiao ◽  
Mengqi Sun

In China, the traditional taxi industry is conforming to the trend of the times, with taxi drivers working with e-hailing applications. This reform is of great significance, not only for the taxi industry, but also for the transportation industry, cities, and society as a whole. Our goal was to analyze the changes in driving behavior since taxi drivers joined e-hailing platforms. Therefore, this paper mined taxi trajectory data from Shanghai and compared the data of May 2015 with those of May 2017 to represent the before-app stage and the full-use stage, respectively. By extracting two-trip events (i.e., vacant trip and occupied trip) and two-spot events (i.e., pick-up spot and drop-off spot), taxi driving behavior changes were analyzed temporally, spatially, and efficiently. The results reveal that e-hailing applications mine more long-distance rides and new pick-up locations for drivers. Moreover, driver initiative have increased at night since using e-hailing applications. Furthermore, mobile payment facilities save time that would otherwise be taken sorting out change. Although e-hailing apps can help citizens get taxis faster, from the driver’s perspective, the apps do not reduce their cruising time. In general, e-hailing software reduces the unoccupied ratio of taxis and improves the operating ratio. Ultimately, new driving behaviors can increase the driver’s revenue. This work is meaningful for the formulation of reasonable traffic laws and for urban traffic decision-making.


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