Context‐aware target classification with hybrid Gaussian process prediction for cooperative vehicle safety systems

Abstract Vehicle‐to‐Everything (V2X) communication has been proposed as a potential solution to improve the robustness and safety of autonomous vehicles by improving coordination and removing the barrier of non‐line‐of‐sight sensing. Cooperative Vehicle Safety (CVS) applications are tightly dependent on the reliability of the underneath data system, which can suffer from loss of information due to the inherent issues of their different components, such as sensors' failures or the poor performance of V2X technologies under dense communication channel load. Particularly, information loss affects the target classification module and, subsequently, the safety application performance. To enable reliable and robust CVS systems that mitigate the effect of information loss, a Context‐Aware Target Classification (CA‐TC) module coupled with a hybrid learning‐based predictive modeling technique for CVS systems is proposed. The CA‐TC consists of two modules: a Context‐Aware Map (CAM), and a Hybrid Gaussian Process (HGP) prediction system. Consequently, the vehicle safety applications use the information from the CA‐TC, making them more robust and reliable. The CAM leverages vehicles' path history, road geometry, tracking, and prediction; and the HGP is utilized to provide accurate vehicles' trajectory predictions to compensate for data loss (due to communication congestion) or sensor measurements' inaccuracies. Based on offline real‐world data, a finite bank of driver models that represent the joint dynamics of the vehicle and the drivers' behavior is learned. Offline training and online model updates are combined with on‐the‐fly forecasting to account for new possible driver behaviors. Finally, the framework is validated using simulation and realistic driving scenarios to confirm its potential in enhancing the robustness and reliability of CVS systems.