Intelligent, In-Vehicle Autonomous Decision-Making Functionality for Driving Style Reconfigurations

Abstract

Intelligent connected vehicles (ICVs) constitute a transformative technology attracting immense research effort and holding great promise in providing road safety, transport efficiency, driving comfort, and eco-friendly mobility. As the driving environment becomes more and more “connected”, the manner in which an ICV is driven (driving style) can dynamically vary from time to time, due to the change in several parameters associated with personal traits and with the ICV’s surroundings. This necessitates fast and effective decisions to be made for a priori identifying the most appropriate driving style for an ICV. Accordingly, the main goal of this study is to present a novel, in-vehicle autonomous decision-making functionality, which enables ICVs to dynamically, transparently, and securely utilize the best available driving style (DS). The proposed functionality takes as input several parameters related to the driver’s personal characteristics and preferences, as well as the changing driving environment. A Naive Bayes learning classifier is applied for the cognitive nature of the presented functionality. Three scenarios, with regards to drivers with different personal preferences and to driving scenes with changing environment situations, are illustrated, showcasing the effectiveness of the proposed functionality.