Publication
HyPlan: Hybrid Learning-Assisted Planning Under Uncertainty for Safe Autonomous Driving
Donald Pfaffmann; Matthias Klusch; Marcel Steinmetz
In: Proceedings of the 37th IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium. IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium (IV-2026), Detroit, MI, USA, IEEE, 2026.
Abstract
We present a novel hybrid learning-assisted planning method, named HyPlan, for solving the collision-free navigation problem for self-driving cars in partially observable traffic environments. HyPlan combines methods for multi-agent behavior prediction, deep reinforcement learning with proximal policy optimization and approximated online POMDP planning with heuristic confidence-based vertical pruning to reduce its execution time without compromising safety of driving. Our experimental performance analysis on the CARLA-CTS2 benchmark of critical traffic scenarios with pedestrians revealed that HyPlan may navigate safer than selected relevant baselines and perform significantly faster than considered alternative online POMDP planners.