On Reliable Neural Network Sensorimotor Control in Autonomous Vehicles

This paper deals with (deep) neural network implementations of sensorimotor control for automated driving. We show how to construct complex behaviors by re-using elementary neural network building blocks that can be trained and tested extensively; one of our goals is to mitigate the “black box” and verifiability issues that affect end-to-end trained networks. By structuring complex behaviors within a subsumption architecture, we retain the ability to learn (mostly at motor primitives level) with the ability to create complex behaviors by subsuming the (well-known) learned elementary perception-action loops. The learning process itself is simplified, since the agent needs only to learn elementary behaviors. At the same time, the structure imposed with the subsumption architecture ensures that the agent behaves in predictable ways (e.g., treating all obstacles uniformly). We demonstrate these ideas for longitudinal obstacle avoidance behavior, but the proposed approach can also be adapted to other situations.