Recognizing hazardous situations among vehicles in a traffic world

The use of a hierarchical plan description language to discriminate hazardous traffic situations from safe situations is described. A plan recognition component represents hypotheses about the drivers plans using this plan-description language. A conflict detection component determines conflicts among these plan hypotheses. The first step of conflict detection is done by qualitative reasoning, while the final decision requires quantitative calculation of trajectories. A simulated overtaking scenario illustrates the approach.<
>