Cooperative Perception Based on Intent Sharing Messages

This paper proposes and investigates the concept of intent-based cooperative perception (IBCP) for connected vehicles. In IBCP, a connected ego vehicle shares its intended path and maneuver with remote connected road users, e.g., other connected vehicles (CVs) and infrastructure. These remote connected road users then process the intent of the ego vehicle and use their on-board sensors to detect critical road users which may come into conflict with the ego vehicle. Once a potential conflict is detected, the remote connected road users send a notification to share information about the critical road users with the ego vehicle. Thus IBCP is an event-based cooperative perception service driven by predicted events (conflicts). IBCP supplements traditional cooperative perception where messages are sent at a periodic rate without distinguishing critical road users from other detected objects. In IBCP, conflicts between CVs and critical road users are anticipated so that the CVs can react in advance. We use experimental data and simulation to evaluate the benefits of the proposed protocol compared to the non-cooperative case for an ego vehicle making a left turn through an intersection with an occlusion.