Automated Lane Change via Adaptive Interactive MPC: Human-in-the-Loop Experiments

This article presents a new optimal control-based interactive motion planning algorithm for an autonomous vehicle interacting with a human-driven vehicle. The ego vehicle solves a joint optimization problem for its motion planning involving costs and coupled constraints of both vehicles and applies its own actions. The nonconvex feasible region and lane discipline are handled by introducing integer decision variables and the resulting optimization problem is a mixed-integer quadratic program (MIQP) which is implemented via model predictive control (MPC). Furthermore, the ego vehicle imputes the cost of human-driven neighboring vehicle (NV) using an inverse optimal control method based on Karush-Kuhn–Tucker (KKT) conditions and adapts the joint optimization cost accordingly. We call the algorithm adaptive interactive mixed-integer MPC (aiMPC). Its interaction with human subjects driving the NV in a mandatory lane change (MLC) scenario is tested in a developed software-and-human-in-the-loop simulator. Results show the effectiveness of the presented algorithm in terms of enhanced mobility of both vehicles compared to baseline methods.