Interaction-Aware Trajectory Prediction for Safe Motion Planning in Autonomous Driving: A Transformer-Transfer Learning Approach

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Contributors

  • Jinhao Liang - , National University of Singapore (Author)
  • Chaopeng Tan - , Chair of Traffic Process Automation (Author)
  • Longhao Yan - , National University of Singapore (Author)
  • Jingyuan Zhou - , National University of Singapore (Author)
  • Guodong Yin - , Southeast University, Nanjing (Author)
  • Kaidi Yang - , National University of Singapore (Author)

Abstract

A critical aspect of safe and efficient motion planning for autonomous vehicles (AVs) is to handle the complex and uncertain behavior of surrounding human-driven vehicles (HDVs). Despite intensive research on driver behavior prediction, existing approaches often overlook the interactions between AVs and HDVs, assuming that HDV trajectories are not influenced by AV actions. To address this gap, we present a transformer-transfer learning-based interaction-aware trajectory predictor for safe motion planning in autonomous driving, focusing on a vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) interaction scenario involving an AV and an HDV. Specifically, we construct a transformer-based interaction-aware trajectory predictor using widely available datasets of HDV trajectory data and further transfer the learned predictor using a small set of AV-HDV interaction data. Then, to better incorporate the proposed trajectory predictor into the motion planning module of AVs, we introduce an uncertainty quantification method to characterize the predictor’s errors, which are integrated into the path-planning process. Our experimental results demonstrate the value of explicitly considering interactions and handling uncertainties.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)17080-17095
Number of pages16
JournalIEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems
Volume26
Issue number10
Early online date21 Jul 2025
Publication statusPublished - Oct 2025
Peer-reviewedYes

External IDs

ORCID /0000-0003-4737-5304/work/194826599

Keywords

Keywords

  • Autonomous vehicles, interaction-aware trajectory prediction, motion planning, transfer learning, uncertain quantification