Enhancing Autonomous Driving in Urban Scenarios: A Hybrid Approach with Reinforcement Learning and Classical Control

The use of Deep Learning algorithms in the domain of Decision Making for Autonomous Vehicles has garnered significant attention in the literature in recent years, showcasing considerable potential. Nevertheless, most of the solutions proposed by the scientific community encounter difficulties in real-world applications. This paper aims to provide a realistic implementation of a hybrid Decision Making module in an Autonomous Driving stack, integrating the learning capabilities from the experience of Deep Reinforcement Learning algorithms and the reliability of classical methodologies. Our Decision Making system is in charge of generating steering and velocity signals using the HD map information and sensors pre-processed data. This work encompasses the implementation of concatenated scenarios in simulated environments, and the integration of Autonomous Driving modules. Specifically, the authors address the Decision Making problem by employing a Partially Observable Markov Decision Process formulation and offer a solution through the use of Deep Reinforcement Learning algorithms. Furthermore, an additional control module to execute the decisions in a safe and comfortable way through a hybrid architecture is presented. The proposed architecture is validated in the CARLA simulator by navigating through multiple concatenated scenarios, outperforming the CARLA Autopilot in terms of completion time, while ensuring both safety and comfort.