Automatic Sensor Correction of Autonomous Vehicles by Human-Vehicle Teaching-and-Learning

Autonomous driving technologies can provide greater safety, comfort, and efficiency for future transportation systems. Until now, much of the research effort has been devoted to developing different sensing and control algorithms. However, there has been limited research on how to handle sensor errors efficiently. A simple error in the sensor may lead to an unexpected failure in the whole autonomous driving function. In those cases, the vehicle is then recommended to be sent back to the manufacturer for repair, which costs time and money. This paper introduces an efficient automatic online sensor correction method. The method includes four major functions: sensor error detection, human teaching, vehicle learning, and vehicle self-evaluation. The first function is assumed to be ready and the major contribution of this paper is the human-vehicle teaching and learning framework, which utilizes human-vehicle interaction to collaboratively adjust the parameter in the control model in order to compensate for the errors of the sensors. The self-evaluation function is also briefly introduced. The applications of this method to radar and vision sensors to recover adaptive cruise control and lane keeping functions are introduced in detail. Experimental results acquired from high-fidelity 1/10-scale autonomous driving vehicles illustrate the effectiveness and advantages of the proposed approach.