Intelligent Control Switching for Autonomous Vehicles based on Reinforcement Learning

Abstract

This paper presents the design and implementation of an intelligent switched control for lateral control of autonomous vehicles. The switched control is designed based on Linear Parameter-Varying (LPV) and Youla-Kucera (YK) parameterization. The proposed intelligent system aims to optimize the control switching performance using a Reinforcement Learning (RL) model. The presented approach studies the critical problem of initial or sudden large lateral errors in lane-tracking or lane-changing. It ensures stable and smooth switching performance to provide a smooth vehicle response regardless of the lateral error. The proposed RL-based switching strategy is validated using a RENAULT simulator on MATLAB, and compared to another modeled switching strategy with encouraging results.