Lane-level route planning for autonomous vehicles

Abstract

We present an algorithm that, given a representation of a road network in lane-level detail, computes a route that minimizes the expected cost to reach a given destination. In doing so, our algorithm allows us to solve for the complex trade-offs encountered when trying to decide not just which roads to follow, but also when to change between the lanes making up these roads, in order to—for example—reduce the likelihood of missing a left exit while not unnecessarily driving in the leftmost lane. This routing problem can naturally be formulated as a Markov Decision Process (MDP), in which lane change actions have stochastic outcomes. However, MDPs are known to be time-consuming to solve in general. In this paper, we show that—under reasonable assumptions—we can use a Dijkstra-like approach to solve this stochastic problem, and benefit from its efficient O( n log  n) running time. This enables an autonomous vehicle to exhibit lane-selection behavior as it efficiently plans an optimal route to its destination.