An Ethical Behavioral Decision Algorithm Awaring of VRUs for Autonomous Vehicle Trajectory Planning

The advancement in autonomous vehicle technology’s independence and ethical considerations have led to the development of the field of machine ethics. The issue of ensuring the safety of autonomous vehicles for usage in real-world traffic is currently a topic of extensive discussion among society, industry, and the scientific community. Enabling autonomous vehicles to make ethical behavioral decisions is constantly emphasized. This work provides an ethical behavioral decision algorithm awaring of VRUs for autonomous vehicle trajectory planning to allocate risk during autonomous vehicle driving in a sensible manner. The principles include maximum acceptable risk, vulnerability risk adjustment, risk minimization, distance, and maximin. The methods led to a 90.6% decrease in average risk and a 95.18% decrease in cumulative harm in typical scenarios, with notable reductions in the highest roadway risk values. The simulation demonstrates that modifying the weight parameters can significantly impact the autonomous vehicle’s driving characteristics. This work considers this ethical behavioral decision algorithm crucial for the widespread acceptance of autonomous vehicles.