Human-Robot Cooperation for Autonomous Vehicles and Human Drivers: Challenges and Solutions

Abstract

Connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) are becoming increasingly feasible, and these vehicles are expected to enhance road safety, traffic throughput, energy efficiency, and human comfort, especially at road intersections and for lane changing, merging, and unprotected turning maneuvers. However, there is likely to be a long transition period before human-driven vehicles are completely replaced by such automated vehicles. To leverage the autonomous driving technologies on public roads, we have to design and develop safe interaction and cooperation for mixed traffic environments, where human-driven and autonomous vehicles cooperate with one another in order to avoid vehicle collisions and possible deadlocks. In this article, we study the requirements and challenges for such safe cooperation of autonomous vehicles and human drivers, and review three prospective components: road infrastructure, vehicular communications, and online recognition and prediction. First, road infrastructure contributes to improving CAV capabilities for safe cooperation as a centralized coordinator. In addition, vehicle-to-vehicle communications might be key to safe cooperation in a decentralized manner that can guarantee road safety for multiple connected vehicles. Online motion prediction and real-time gesture recognition are also essential to develop a safe cooperation system in a decentralized manner with non-connected vehicles. These three approaches are not exclusive, and CAVs may complementarily use them in practice. Finally, we discuss the feasibility and limitations of each approach and conclude with future research directions.