This article contrives a neural-adaptive constrained controller of the cable towed air-ground recovery system subject to terrain obstacles, unmeasurable cable tensions, trailing vortex, wind gust, and actuator saturation. In air-ground recovery system modeling, the towed vehicle's nominal 6 DOF affine nonlinear dynamics and the cable system's finite links-joints dynamics are formulated. To achieve accurate air-ground recovery under terrain obstacles, an asymmetric barrier Lyapunov function-based flight controller of the towed vehicle is proposed, by transforming the terrain obstacles into time-varying constraints on the vehicle's trajectory. Then, to approximate the towed vehicle's lumped unknown dynamics caused by the unmeasurable cable tensions and airflows, several echo state network (ESN) approximators are established for velocity and attitude subsystems. By using the state approximation errors-based neural weights learning strategy and minimal learning parameter technique, these ESNs possess better transient behaviors and lower online computational burden. Furthermore, the actuator saturation is automatically monitored and released, by incorporating a specially designed auxiliary compensating system into the angular rate control law for compensation. The stability of the closed-loop system is analyzed. Finally, numerical simulations under two air-ground recovery scenarios are performed to demonstrate the performance of the proposed controller.@en

Satellite observation scheduling plays a significant role in improving the efficiency of Earth observation systems. To solve the large-scale multisatellite observation scheduling problem, this article proposes an ensemble of metaheuristic and exact algorithms based on a divide-And-conquer framework (EHE-DCF), including a task allocation phase and a task scheduling phase. In the task allocation phase, each task is allocated to a proper orbit based on a metaheuristic incorporated with a probabilistic selection and a tabu mechanism derived from ant colony optimization and tabu search, respectively. In the task scheduling phase, we construct a task scheduling model for every single orbit and solve the model by using an exact method (i.e., branch and bound, B&B). The task allocation and task scheduling phases are performed iteratively to obtain a promising solution. To validate the performance of the EHE-DCF, we compare it with B&B, three divide-And-conquer-based metaheuristics, and a state-of-The-Art metaheuristic. Experimental results show that the EHE-DCF can obtain higher scheduling profits and complete more tasks compared with existing algorithms. The EHE-DCF is especially efficient for large-scale satellite observation scheduling problems.@en

The last decades have witnessed a rapid increase of Earth observation satellites (EOSs), leading to the increasing complexity of EOSs scheduling. On account of the widespread applications of large region observation, this article aims to address the EOSs observation scheduling problem for large region targets. A rapid coverage calculation method employing a projection reference plane and a polygon clipping technique is first developed. We then formulate a nonlinear integer programming model for the scheduling problem, where the objective function is calculated based on the developed coverage calculation method. A greedy initialization-based resampling particle swarm optimization (GI-RPSO) algorithm is proposed to solve the model. The adopted greedy initialization strategy and particle resampling method contribute to generating efficient and effective solutions during the evolution process. In the end, extensive experiments are conducted to illustrate the effectiveness and reliability of the proposed method. Compared to the traditional PSO and the widely used greedy algorithm, the proposed GI-RPSO can improve the scheduling result by 5.42% and 15.86%, respectively. @en

Current driver behaviour models (DBMs) are primarily designed for the general driver population under specific scenarios, such as car following or lane changing. Hence DBMs capturing individual behaviour under various scenarios are lacking. This paper presents a novel method to quantify individual perceived driving risk in the longitudinal and lateral directions using risk thresholds capturing the time headway and time to line crossing. These are integrated in a risk-based DBM formulated under a model predictive control (MPC) framework taking into account vehicle dynamics. The DBM assumes drivers to operate as predictive controllers jointly optimising multiple criteria, including driving risk, discomfort, and travel inefficiency. Simulation results in car following and passing a slower vehicle demonstrate that the DBM predicts plausible behaviour under representative driving scenarios, and that the risk thresholds are able to reflect individual driving behaviour. Furthermore, the proposed DBM is verified using empirical driving data collected from a driving simulator, and the results show it is able to accurately generate vehicle longitudinal and lateral control matching individual human drivers. Overall, this model can capture individual risk perception behaviour and can be applied to the design and assessment of intelligent vehicle systems.@en

Road traffic safety has attracted increasing research attention, in particular in the current transition from human-driven vehicles to autonomous vehicles. Surrogate measures of safety are widely used to assess traffic safety but they typically ignore motion uncertainties and are inflexible in dealing with two-dimensional motion. Meanwhile, learning-based lane-change and trajectory prediction models have shown potential to provide accurate prediction results. We therefore propose a prediction-based driving risk metric for two-dimensional motion on multi-lane highways, expressed by the maximum risk value over different time instants within a prediction horizon. At each time instant, the risk of the vehicle is estimated as the sum of weighted risks over each mode in a finite set of lane-change maneuver possibilities. Under each maneuver mode, the risk is calculated as the product of three factors: lane-change maneuver mode probability, collision probability and expected crash severity. The three factors are estimated leveraging two-stage multi-modal trajectory predictions for surrounding vehicles: first a lane-change intention prediction module is invoked to provide lane-change maneuver mode possibilities, and then the mode possibilities are used as partial input for a multi-modal trajectory prediction module. Working with the empirical trajectory dataset highD and simulated highway scenarios, the proposed two-stage model achieves superior performance compared to a state-of-the-art prediction model. The proposed risk metric is computationally efficient for real-time applications, and effective to identify potential crashes earlier thanks to the employed prediction model.@en

Real-time safety systems are crucial components of intelligent vehicles. This paper introduces a prediction-based collision risk assessment approach on highways. Given a point mass vehicle dynamics system, a stochastic forward reachable set considering two-dimensional motion with vehicle state probability distributions is firstly established. We then develop an acceleration prediction model, which provides multi-modal probabilistic acceleration distributions to propagate vehicle states. The collision probability is calculated by summing up the probabilities of the states where two vehicles spatially overlap. Simulation results show that the prediction model has superior performance in terms of vehicle motion position errors, and the proposed collision detection approach is agile and effective to identify the collision in cut-in crash events.@en

Multitype satellite observation, including optical observation satellites, synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites, and electromagnetic satellites, has become an important direction in integrated satellite applications due to its ability to cope with various complex situations. In the multitype satellite observation scheduling problem (MTSOSP), the constraints involved in different types of satellites make the problem challenging. This article proposes a mixed-integer programming model and a generalized profit representation method in the model to effectively cope with the situation of multiple types of satellite observations. To obtain a suitable observation plan, a deep reinforcement learning-based genetic algorithm (DRL-GA) is proposed by combining the learning method and genetic algorithm. The DRL-GA adopts a solution generation method to obtain the initial population and assist with local search. In this method, a set of statistical indicators that consider resource utilization and task arrangement performance are regarded as states. By using deep neural networks to estimate the <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$Q$</tex-math> </inline-formula> value of each action, this method can determine the preferred order of task scheduling. An individual update strategy and an elite strategy are used to enhance the search performance of DRL-GA. Simulation results verify that DRL-GA can effectively solve the MTSOSP and outperforms the state-of-the-art algorithms in several aspects. This work reveals the advantages of the proposed generalized model and scheduling method, which exhibit good scalability for various types of observation satellite scheduling problems.@en

Multitype satellite observation, including optical observation satellites, synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites, and electromagnetic satellites, has become an important direction in integrated satellite applications due to its ability to cope with various complex situations. In the multitype satellite observation scheduling problem (MTSOSP), the constraints involved in different types of satellites make the problem challenging. This article proposes a mixed-integer programming model and a generalized profit representation method in the model to effectively cope with the situation of multiple types of satellite observations. To obtain a suitable observation plan, a deep reinforcement learning-based genetic algorithm (DRL-GA) is proposed by combining the learning method and genetic algorithm. The DRL-GA adopts a solution generation method to obtain the initial population and assist with local search. In this method, a set of statistical indicators that consider resource utilization and task arrangement performance are regarded as states. By using deep neural networks to estimate the <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$Q$</tex-math> </inline-formula> value of each action, this method can determine the preferred order of task scheduling. An individual update strategy and an elite strategy are used to enhance the search performance of DRL-GA. Simulation results verify that DRL-GA can effectively solve the MTSOSP and outperforms the state-of-the-art algorithms in several aspects. This work reveals the advantages of the proposed generalized model and scheduling method, which exhibit good scalability for various types of observation satellite scheduling problems.@en

Risk assessment is a crucial component of collision warning and avoidance systems for intelligent vehicles. Reachability-based formal approaches have been developed to ensure driving safety to accurately detect potential vehicle collisions. However, they suffer from over-conservatism, potentially resulting in false–positive risk events in complicated real-world applications. In this paper, we combine two reachability analysis techniques, a backward reachable set (BRS) and a stochastic forward reachable set (FRS), and propose an integrated probabilistic collision–detection framework for highway driving. Within this framework, we can first use a BRS to formally check whether a two-vehicle interaction is safe; otherwise, a prediction-based stochastic FRS is employed to estimate the collision probability at each future time step. Thus, the framework can not only identify non-risky events with guaranteed safety but also provide accurate collision risk estimation in safety–critical events. To construct the stochastic FRS, we develop a neural network-based acceleration model for surrounding vehicles and further incorporate a confidence-aware dynamic belief to improve the prediction accuracy. Extensive experiments were conducted to validate the performance of the acceleration prediction model based on naturalistic highway driving data. The efficiency and effectiveness of the framework with infused confidence beliefs were tested in both naturalistic and simulated highway scenarios. The proposed risk assessment framework is promising for real-world applications.@en

Risk assessment is a crucial component of collision warning and avoidance systems for intelligent vehicles. Reachability-based formal approaches have been developed to ensure driving safety to accurately detect potential vehicle collisions. However, they suffer from over-conservatism, potentially resulting in false–positive risk events in complicated real-world applications. In this paper, we combine two reachability analysis techniques, a backward reachable set (BRS) and a stochastic forward reachable set (FRS), and propose an integrated probabilistic collision–detection framework for highway driving. Within this framework, we can first use a BRS to formally check whether a two-vehicle interaction is safe; otherwise, a prediction-based stochastic FRS is employed to estimate the collision probability at each future time step. Thus, the framework can not only identify non-risky events with guaranteed safety but also provide accurate collision risk estimation in safety–critical events. To construct the stochastic FRS, we develop a neural network-based acceleration model for surrounding vehicles and further incorporate a confidence-aware dynamic belief to improve the prediction accuracy. Extensive experiments were conducted to validate the performance of the acceleration prediction model based on naturalistic highway driving data. The efficiency and effectiveness of the framework with infused confidence beliefs were tested in both naturalistic and simulated highway scenarios. The proposed risk assessment framework is promising for real-world applications.@en

Precisely modeling interactions and accurately predicting trajectories of surrounding vehicles are essential to the decision-making and path-planning of intelligent vehicles. This paper proposes a novel framework based on ensemble learning to improve the performance of trajectory predictions in interactive scenarios. The framework is termed Interactive Ensemble Trajectory Predictor (IETP). IETP assembles interaction-aware trajectory predictors as base learners to build an ensemble learner. Firstly, each base learner in IETP observes historical trajectories of vehicles in the scene. Then each base learner handles interactions between vehicles to predict trajectories. Finally, an ensemble learner is built to predict trajectories by applying two ensemble strategies on the predictions from all base learners. Predictions generated by the ensemble learner are final outputs of IETP. In this study, three experiments using different data are conducted based on the NGSIM dataset. Experimental results show that IETP improves the predicting accuracy and decreases the variance of errors compared to base learners. In addition, IETP exceeds baseline models with 50% of the training data, indicating that IETP is data-efficient. Moreover, the implementation of IETP is publicly available at https://github.com/BIT-Jack/IETP.@en

Balancing safety and efficiency when planning in crowded scenarios with uncertain dynamics is challenging where it is imperative to accomplish the robot's mission without incurring any safety violations. Typically, chance constraints are incorporated into the planning problem to provide probabilistic safety guarantees by imposing an upper bound on the collision probability of the planned trajectory. Yet, this results in an overly conservative behavior on the grounds that the gap between the obtained risk and the specified upper limit is not explicitly restricted. To address this issue, we propose a real-time capable approach to quantify the risk associated with planned trajectories obtained from multiple probabilistic planners, running in parallel, with different upper bounds of the acceptable risk level. Based on the evaluated risk, the least conservative plan is selected provided that its associated risk is below a specified threshold. In such a way, the proposed approach provides probabilistic safety guarantees by attaining a closer bound to the specified risk, while being applicable to generic uncertainties of moving obstacles. We demonstrate the efficiency of our proposed approach, by improving the performance of a state-of-the-art probabilistic planner, in simulations and experiments using a mobile robot in an environment shared with humans.@en