A Reasoning Framework for Autonomous Urban Driving
Dave Ferguson*, Christopher Baker**,
Maxim Likhachev*** and John Dolan**
Abstract
Urban driving is a demanding task for autonomous
vehicles as it requires the development and integration
of several challenging capabilities, including high-level
route planning, interaction with other vehicles, complex
maneuvers, and ultra-reliability. In this paper, we present a
reasoning framework for an autonomous vehicle navigating
through urban environments. Our approach combines route-level
planning, context-sensitive local decision making, and sophisticated
motion planning to produce safe, intelligent actions
for the vehicle. We provide examples from an implementation
on an autonomous passenger vehicle that has driven over 3000
autonomous kilometers and competed in, and won, the Urban
Challenge.