A Cooperative Optimal Control Framework for Connected and Automated Vehicles in Mixed Traffic Using Social Value Orientation

Abstract

In this paper, we develop a socially cooperative optimal control framework to address the motion planning problem for connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) in mixed traffic using social value orientation (SVO) and a potential game approach. In the proposed framework, we formulate the interaction between a CAV and a human-driven vehicle (HDV) as a simultaneous game where each vehicle minimizes a weighted sum of its egoistic objective and a cooperative objective. The SVO angles are used to quantify preferences of the vehicles toward the egoistic and cooperative objectives. Using the potential game approach, we propose a single objective function for the optimal control problem whose weighting factors are chosen based on the SVOs of the vehicles. We prove that a Nash equilibrium can be obtained by minimizing the proposed objective function. To estimate the SVO angle of the HDV, we develop a moving horizon estimation algorithm based on maximum entropy inverse reinforcement learning. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is demonstrated by numerical simulations of a vehicle merging scenario.