Vehicle Collision Risk Prediction Using a Dynamic Bayesian Network

Abstract: This thesis tackles the problem of predicting the collision risk for vehicles driving in complex traffic scenes for a few seconds into the future. The method is based on previous research using dynamic Bayesian networks to represent the state of the system. Common risk prediction methods are often categorized into three different groups depending on their abstraction level. The most complex of these are interaction-aware models which take driver interactions into account. These models often suffer from high computational complexity which is a key limitation in practical use. The model studied in this work takes interactions between drivers into account by considering driver intentions and the traffic rules in the scene. The state of the traffic scene used in the model contains the physical state of vehicles, the intentions of drivers and the expected behaviour of drivers according to the traffic rules. To allow for real-time risk assessment, an approximate inference of the state given the noisy sensor measurements is done using sequential importance resampling. Two different measures of risk are studied. The first is based on driver intentions not matching the expected maneuver, which in turn could lead to a dangerous situation. The second measure is based on a trajectory prediction step and uses the two measures time to collision (TTC) and time to critical collision probability (TTCCP). The implemented model can be applied in complex traffic scenarios with numerous participants. In this work, we focus on intersection and roundabout scenarios. The model is tested on simulated and real data from these scenarios. %Simulations of these scenarios is used to test the model. In these qualitative tests, the model was able to correctly identify collisions a few seconds before they occur and is also able to avoid false positives by detecting the vehicles that will give way.