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Let Hybrid A* Path Planner Obey Traffic Rules: A Deep Reinforcement Learning-Based Planning Framework

Robotics 2024-07-02 v1 Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

Deep reinforcement learning (DRL) allows a system to interact with its environment and take actions by training an efficient policy that maximizes self-defined rewards. In autonomous driving, it can be used as a strategy for high-level decision making, whereas low-level algorithms such as the hybrid A* path planning have proven their ability to solve the local trajectory planning problem. In this work, we combine these two methods where the DRL makes high-level decisions such as lane change commands. After obtaining the lane change command, the hybrid A* planner is able to generate a collision-free trajectory to be executed by a model predictive controller (MPC). In addition, the DRL algorithm is able to keep the lane change command consistent within a chosen time-period. Traffic rules are implemented using linear temporal logic (LTL), which is then utilized as a reward function in DRL. Furthermore, we validate the proposed method on a real system to demonstrate its feasibility from simulation to implementation on real hardware.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2407.01216,
  title  = {Let Hybrid A* Path Planner Obey Traffic Rules: A Deep Reinforcement Learning-Based Planning Framework},
  author = {Xibo Li and Shruti Patel and Christof Büskens},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2407.01216},
  year   = {2024}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T17:24:51.326Z