Waymo LLC

Menghui Wang

Aleksandar Gabrovski

Yang-Hua Chu

Xiaoyi Liu

Wesley Heung

Johan Engstrom

Haoyu Chen

Isaac Supeene

Azadeh Dinparastdjadid

The disclosure relates to running simulations in order to test software used to control a vehicle in an autonomous driving mode. For instance, logged data may be identified for a simulation. The logged data may have been collected by a first vehicle and may identifying an agent that is a road user. The logged data may be analyzed to identify one or more signals of intent of the agent including a logged path of the agent. One or more characteristics may be identified based on the one or more signals. The simulation may be run using the logged data by replacing the agent with an interactive agent having the one or more characteristics. The interactive agent may be capable of responding to actions performed by a simulated vehicle in the simulation using software for controlling a vehicle in an autonomous driving mode.

Extracting agent intent from log data for running log-based simulations for evaluating autonomous vehicle software

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on computer storage media, for computing a backward looking surprise metric for autonomously driven vehicles. One of the methods includes obtaining first data representing one or more previously predicted states of an agent along one or more predicted trajectories of the agent at a first time step. Second data representing one or more states of the agent at a subsequent time step is obtained. A surprise score is computed from a measure of a difference between the first data computed for the one or more predicted trajectories for the prior time step and the second data computed for the one or more predicted states for the subsequent time step.

Assessing surprise for autonomous vehicles

The disclosure relates to testing software for operating an autonomous vehicle. In one instance, a simulation may be run using log data collected by a vehicle operating in an autonomous driving mode. The simulation may be run using the software to control a simulated vehicle and by modifying a characteristic of an agent identified in the log data. During the running of the simulation, that a first type of interaction between the first simulated vehicle and the modified agent will occur may be determined. In response to determining that the particular type of interaction will occur, the modified agent may be replaced by a interactive agent that simulates a road user corresponding to the modified agent that is capable of responding to actions performed by simulated vehicles. That the particular type of interaction between the simulated vehicle and the interactive agent has occurred in the simulation may be determined.

Simulations with modified agents for testing autonomous vehicle software

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Santa Clara, CA, United States of America

Menghui Wang