CPS Medium: Cooperative Driving in Heterogeneous Traffic of Manned and Unmanned Vehicles

该网络物理系统（CPS）项目将开发一个理论框架，促进人工驾驶和自动驾驶车辆在异构交通中的安全合作驾驶，并通过模拟和物理实验证明其可行性。该项目将有助于提高交通系统的安全性，目前交通系统正被越来越多的自动驾驶汽车所改变。通过在传统的人类驾驶车辆中引入附加设备或副驾驶仪，该项目将提供一个智能驾驶助手，可以了解驾驶员的行为，并在车辆处于危险中时提醒驾驶员。当进行协同驾驶时，副驾驶将提供建议，以减少与附近车辆碰撞的机会。通过促进新兴自动驾驶汽车和传统人类驾驶汽车的合作驾驶，该项目将培养公众对自动驾驶的积极态度，从而加速自动驾驶汽车进入交通系统。教育和推广活动将提高年轻一代对自动驾驶、人工智能（AI）和机器人技术的认识，并激励未来的学生攻读科学和工程方面的学位和职业。本研究探讨了一个具有挑战性的问题，即由人工驾驶和自动驾驶车辆组成的网络-物理-人系统的协同控制。首先，通过利用机器学习技术，本研究将开发一种集成的数据驱动、基于模型的方法，对具有不同级别的人和机器控制的车辆驾驶行为进行建模。在有和没有副驾驶建议的情况下，将建立新的人类驾驶行为机器学习模型，该模型将外部风险和驾驶员行为融合起来，通过一种新的车辆反应模型来推断车辆的预期机动。其次，本研究将为协作驾驶开发一个统一的决策框架，利用人与机器在传感、分析和控制方面的差异，为自动驾驶车辆和驾驶员提供实时建议，以提高安全性。这样的框架可以扩展到其他类别的网络-物理-人类系统，其中对人类操作员的智能建议可以促进协作并提高系统级性能和安全性。第三，本研究将开发模拟和物理测试平台，以对理论框架进行实验评估。最后，这项研究将把现有的合作自动化研究移动应用平台扩展到自动驾驶汽车和传统车辆，这将使研究人员能够研究涉及人类和机器的未来智能交通系统中的新问题。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) project will develop a theoretical framework that facilitates safe cooperative driving in heterogeneous traffic of human-operated and autonomously-operated vehicles and demonstrate its feasibility through both simulation and physical experiments. This project will help improve the safety of a transportation system currently being transformed by vehicles with growing autonomous features. By introducing an add-on device, or copilot, into legacy human-driven vehicles, this project will offer a smart driving assistant that is aware of the driver's behaviors and can alert the driver when the vehicle is at risk. When engaged in cooperative driving, the copilot will provide advice that reduces the chance of collision with nearby vehicles. By facilitating cooperative driving for both emerging autonomous vehicles and legacy human-driven vehicles, this project will foster a positive attitude of the public toward autonomous driving, therefore accelerating the adoption of autonomous vehicles into the transportation system. The education and outreach activities will raise more awareness of autonomous driving, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics to the younger generation, and stimulate prospective students to pursue degrees and careers in science and engineering. This research explores the challenging problem of cooperative control of a cyber-physical-human system consisting of both human-operated and autonomously-operated vehicles. First, by leveraging machine learning technologies, this research will develop an integrated data-driven, model-based approach to modeling vehicle driving behaviors with various levels of human and machine control. New machine learning models of human driving behaviors in the presence and absence of copilot's advice will be built, which fuse both external risks and driver's behavior to infer vehicle's intended maneuvers through a novel vehicle reaction model. Second, this research will develop a unified decision framework for cooperative driving that leverages the differences between humans and machines in sensing, analytics, and control to produce real-time advice to autonomous vehicles and drivers for enhanced safety. Such a framework can be extended to other classes of networked cyber-physical-human systems, where intelligent advice to human operators can facilitate collaboration and enhance system level performance and safety. Third, this research will develop both simulated and physical testbeds for experimental evaluation of the theoretical framework. Finally, this research will expand the existing Cooperative Automation Research Mobility Applications platform to both autonomous vehicles and legacy vehicles, which will allow researchers to study new problems in future intelligent transportation systems that involve both humans and machines.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.