11th IEEE International Symposium on Applied Computational Intelligence and Informatics • May 12-14, 2016 • Timişoara, Romania

Issues about Autonomous Cars

Claudiu Poznaa,b Csaba Antonya

a
Transilvania University of Brasov, Romania Transilvania University of Brasov Romania
b
Széchenyi István University, Győr, Hungary antonya@unitbv.ro
cp@unitbv.ro

Abstract— The Autonomous car is a complex topic, Figures 1-2) the real developments have been achieved by
different technical fields like: Automotive engineering, designing the car from scratch
Control engineering, Informatics, Artificial Intelligence etc.
are involved in solving the human driver replacement with an
artificial (agent) driver. The problem is even more complicated
because usually, nowadays, having and driving a car defines
our lifestyle. This means that the mentioned (major)
transformation is also a cultural issue. The paper will start
with the mentioned cultural aspects related to a self-driving
car and will continue with the big picture of the system.

Keywords— autonomous car, control architecture, mobile

robots

I. INTRODUCTION
At first glance the Autonomous Car (AC) concept can
be defined like a car which is able to drive itself. This
means that we deal with a car which copies the human
driver’s performances.
Is this a mobile robot? The answer is yes, if we consider
only the autonomy, but no, if we have in mind that it is
necessary to add specific interfaces that are not needed in
the case of the mobile (we mention here the interface
between the human passenger and the autonomous car,
etc.).
Figure 1. M Cugnot's steam wagon, the second (1771) version
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_automobile]
Is this a car? Once again the answer is yes, if we focus
on its navigation capability and no, if we observe that the
difference between a car and an AC is more than a simple
aggregation of several systems. If our original system (the
car) was not designed (form the beginning) to enable such
a development it is more suitable to start a new design.
From many points of view the difference between a cart
and a car reflect the difference between the car and the
AC. Even at the first trails the cars have been constructed
by adding an engine and a transmission to the cart (see
Figure 2. The second Marcus car of 1888 at the Technical Museum in
Vienna [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_automobile]
And designing a car is only a small part of the changes.
Because this moving possibility (by cars) proves such a
success it lead, by a domino effect, to new infrastructure
(roads), transportation conventions (signs), etc. in fact to a
new lifestyle. This new locomotion possibility creates also
a powerful economic development caused by the cars
manufacturing factories and also by the related industries.
From these points of view the mentioned developments
have had a cultural impact.
Also, the AC is it an (artificial) intelligent agent which
has the ability to navigate like a car or is it a car which has
the ability to navigate in an intelligence way? We think
that it is not practical to turn this vague (not well defined
yet) subject in to another vague subject who refers to the
artificial intelligence. Unfortunately it is a trend in our
culture to name ordinary product like intelligent product
(starting with the famous screwdriver and ending by cars).
However it is clear that the AC is a mechatronic product,
which use information processing, this means also
learning technics, we imagine that the level of abstraction
of these programs far outstrips the level of nowadays
programs used by the cars ECU (Electronic Control
Units).
If we extrapolate these developments we must be
prepare for a revolution: a new transportation system -
which we name nowadays the Autonomous Car (AC), in a
similar way to our ancestors who named the innovation by
motor – cab new infrastructures, new driving conventions
etc.
Nowadays the car is much more than a transportation
possibility, like all important thinks from our life, it was
transformed and cultural integrated in to a symbol. The

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C. Pozna, Cs. Antonya • Issues about Autonomous Cars
mobility was related with the freedom, the engine power
with authority. As a result the car became a symbol of
masculinity, fact which is use abundantly by cars
designer. Intuitively we can infer that the AC will not
have these characteristics. The AC will belong to a
network; the driver will become a passenger which is not
more in charge; the shape of the AC will be different
because the many subsystems of the car will be
unnecessary (steering wills, gear box lever, etc.) and other
will appear (working or entrainment habitat,
communication with other AC, etc.) or will be developed
(communication etc.). The AC will have other symbols
and significance in our future culture.
Because the AC is an exciting subject, not only for
universities and cars manufacturers but also for the
general public, the danger of misconceptions appears.
From [1] we have selected the following ideas:
• “Driver assistance systems will evolve gradually
into fully autonomous cars”. In fact the AC is not
a result of driver assistant systems evolutions.
Adding capabilities like lateral dynamic
assistance stop and go assistance, etc. will not
generate (in the end) the AC. All these system
are designed for the traditional cars;
• “The first models of fully autonomous cars will
be targeted to the consumer and will be available
for purchase”. In fact the autonomous driving
problem complexity will increase the time
horizon until such a system (the AC) will
becomes an available product;
• “Public demonstrations of self-driving cars
provide an indication of their capabilities”; In
fact even nowadays encouraging results have
been proved by the researcher, the problem
complexity far exceeds these success.
We briefly sum up our conclusions concerning the
developments of the autonomous cars:
• The AC subject performs nowadays its baby step.
• There are several projects made by powerful car
companies. The results of these projects are
summarized by the sentence: “It can be done, but
it is too expensive”;
• The autonomous car construction implies a
mechanical and electrical design. There are two
solutions: transform a real car into an
autonomous car [2] or design a new vehicle [3].
• The mobile robots’ navigation has been defined
from mathematical point of view [8], this means
that we have the axiomatic background for the
solutions;
• Each mentioned work try to solve the navigation
problem or a part of this problem in a particular
way. There are used classical robust control
techniques [9], fuzzy logic or neural network
strategies [4, 10-13] or solution based on
Bayesian theory of probability [ 3, 5, 6, 7, 8];
• One drawback of the mentioned solutions is the
time consuming computation, needed in solving
complex situations [8].
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II. THE PROPOSED SYSTEM ARHITECTURE
For the currently development stage of the AC
construction, characterized mostly by the aggregation
between a traditional car and a control system we sustain
the idea of using an expert system. The goal of the
mentioned expert system is to manage the Driver
Behaviors (DB). The proposed control system
architecture use the human driver behavior model
concept.
Preliminary discussions are necessary. The “Driver’s
Behaviors” model is used in the simulation [15], [16] and
also in autonomous car design field [14]. It is known that
the first researches on the subject take place in 1950 [15]
and began with the “Skill-based driving model”,
continued with the “Motivational model” which take into
account the drivers’ emotional state (we mention here the
“Risk compensation”; “Risk avoidance” and “Risk
threshold models”). Lately, the model became a
“Hierarchical control structure” (Milchon). The
“Hierarchical control structure” splits the driving process
into three levels of control: a strategic level, here the goal
of the driving – the task-is establish; a tactical level, used
for solving parts of the tasks; and (in the end) an
operational level, which implements the mentioned
solutions using low level control. Using this
“Hierarchical control structure” numerous scientific
papers develop problems like: “Longitudinal behaviors
models” [14]; “Lateral behaviors model” [17]; “Brake
behavior” [14] etc. We proposed [18] a heuristic
approach related to the control programs architectures
which model the human behavior [15], [16].
Our idea claims that it is more suitable to model and
implement the “human driver decisions act”, than the
“human driver actions”. Using this concept we transfer
the modeling (approximation) of the human driver
behaviors from a mechanical problem to a computer
science problem.
From care to define the problem correctly, preliminary
(phenomenological - here the words wisdom
methodology) analyses [20] need to answer to the
following questions: “What are driving behaviors?”;
“Can we obtain fundamental true about these behaviors
and use them in our construction?”
The phenomenological researches start with the
semantic characteristics of “Driving behavior”. The
category tree of behavior word consist on {act → activity
→ (behavior, practice,...)}. The behavior is defined like
“an action or a set of actions performed by a person
under specified circumstances that reveal some skill,
knowledge or attitude”.
Researches on driving behavior [14-19] revealed that
the driving behavior has a special feature. In order to
describe it, we concentrate on the word “custom” which
belongs to the same category tree {act → activity →
practice → habit,.}. Custom is defined as: “accepted or
habitual practice”. These habits have a special property:
the automatism - any reaction that occurs automatically
without conscious thought or reflection. Concatenating
the previous definitions, “A Driving Behavior” can be
defined like an action or a set of actions performed by a
person under driving circumstances, actions which tend
to be transformed in habits and even in automatisms.
 11th IEEE International Symposium on Applied Computational Intelligence and Informatics • May 12-14, 2016 • Timişoara, Romania
Input Interface:
Establish the AC task
Behaviors:
Generate behaviors;
Import the behaviors;
Improves the behaviors;
Store behaviors;
Initiate behaviors;
Output Interface:
Output the state of the AC;
Trigger the actuators
Figure 3. The proposed architecture
The “Driving Behaviors” is a collection of behaviors
(the driver’s behavior for car ignition, the driver’s
behavior for stop the car, etc.).
The “Fundamental truths” have been inferred from the
“Driving Behavior” concept and have been used, like
Meta Knowledge, in the control architecture design:
1. A priori, the driver establishes the current
driving goal;
2. A behavior is a set of actions;
3. The behaviors are linked together, creating a
system which allows the driver to obtain
solutions in the driving circumstance;
4. The change from one behavior to another is
triggered by an occurrence event;
5. This system is developed by learning -
experience;
6. Behaviors presume decisions with an incomplete
set of information;
7. In time, these sets of actions tend to be
transformed in habits and automatisms.
Transferring the previous propositions in to the
Milchon architecture we obtain (see Figure 4) the
strategic level, which models the phenomenon when the
driver establishes his goal; the tactical level, which
models the driver acts when he most find the solution in
order to accomplish the goal and the operational level,
which models the implementations of these solutions.
Strategic Level
Program Manager:
Analyze the task versus driving
circumstances (DC);
Decide to run the appropriate behavior
Filter DC:
Construct the driving circumstance (DC);
Tactical Level
Actuator Sensors:
Communications: Read the state of the AC and
the environment characteristics
Operational Level
The “Human Driving Behaviors” is a set of linked
programs (behaviors) which are stored in a memory. The
manager program decides to run a certain program. This
decision is possible knowing the driving goal and on the
environment conditions which we have named driving
circumstance (DC).
Each behavior is a state machine, a set of actions.
These actions compute parameters which are used in
actuators triggering
Some comments are necessary (see Figure 3):
• The strategic level is an interface where the user
define the AC task
• The AC analyzes the task, using the “Program
Manager”, compare it with the DC and decide to
run a certain “Behavior”;
• The DC have been defined by sensors fusion in
the Filter DC subsystem;
• The “Behaviors” subsystem is used to:
o Generate behaviors i.e. learn new
behaviors
o Import the behaviors from the AC
network
o Improves the behaviors i.e. correct and
optimize actions which are already
included or add new actions;
o Store behaviors;
o Initiate the behaviors proposed by the
Program Manager
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C. Pozna, Cs. Antonya • Issues about Autonomous Cars

• The “Output Interface” allows the monitoring of the “Failure” events are signaled. The meaning of
the states ; “Crisis” is that a new Behavior is necessary. “Failure”
• The “Actuators Communications” outputs means that in the collection of the Behavior system no
commands to the actuators microcontrollers; proper Behaviors can be found other than to stop the AC
safely.
We have constructed and tray a part of the proposed
architecture in [18]. In that case the collection of III. CONCLUSIONS
behaviors has had a specific typology presented in figure
4.
Three different structures have been used: “The basic The proposed control architecture is composed from a
behaviors”, “The error behaviors” and “The simple strategical level a tactical level and an operational level.
behaviors”. The structural differences between these The first level task is to establish the AC task i.e. an
programs are the input output connections (P previous, N interface between the user and the AC; the second level
next, E error, QI quick in, QO quick out) and the mission is to solve situations which are probable but there
information flow direction. are not anticipated by the previous level (a pedestrian
which cross the road, an illegally maneuver of another
driver etc.); the last level use the task defined from the
Basic behavior
E tactical level and control the AC actuators, read the
sensors etc.
P
Action 1 Action n N The current issues of AC design consist on solving
unexpected driving problem, these issues refers to the
second level of the proposed architecture. From our point
Error behavior of view solving a tactical problem require the knowledge
of a certain driver behavior. A behavior is a well-defined
Action 1 Action n set of (here driver) actions. In turn an action is a basic
driver maneuver for example: pushes the brake pedal,
E
steers the wheels with a particular angel etc. The tactical
Simple behavior level will trigger a particular behavior in order to solve a
particular locomotion problem.
Action 1 Action nE We can model the behavior with a discrete system so
P N the state machine is one of the suitable mathematical
models. This means that the actions will be modeled like
QIn QO states. A specific network of states will define a behavior.
We imagine that the tactical level is an expert system
which manipulates behaviors according to its rules.
Figure 4. Different Behavior structures Knowledge consists on rules and behaviors (proposed
solutions).
In this way the challenges of tactical level design are
transferred to the expert system design. Here the keystone
AC Task problem is to avoid the expert system paradox: the
DC incompleteness of rules. For the AC, the incompleteness
refers to the behaviors set. There are always locomotion
problems which cannot be solved by the known set of
behaviors.
Our proposed solution to this issue is to acquire new
knowledges. We consider that the locomotion is a source
Continue to OK FAILURE Stop the of experience which can be transformed in knowledges
run the AC using learning technics. Once again the human driver
program example is follow. Starting with a basic collection of
CRISIS driving behaviors the human driving will acquire new
skills using its experience.
The challenges of tactical level design are now
Change the Behavior transferred to the learning system design. The learning
will improve continuously the capacity of the expert
system which will manage solutions for more and more
Figure 5. The Program Manager structure complex locomotion problem.
Even there are many well-known machines learning
techniques - supervise, unsupervised or reinforcement -
Comparing the AC task with the driving circumstance we consider that the experience itself is the hard problem
(DC) the “Program Manager” decides, about the to be solves. In [20] we have proposed a learning system
Behavior which will be run (see Figure 5). No changes used for an artificial intelligence agent. This system
are too made as long as the current behavior solves the combines perceptions, observations and experience.
task and DC demands. On the contrary, the “Crisis” or

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 11th IEEE International Symposium on Applied Computational Intelligence and Informatics • May 12-14, 2016 • Timişoara, Romania
From the Driver Behaviors collections in [22] we have
developed the trajectory following and the obstacles
avoiding Behaviors.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The presented research studies are sponsored by the
TAMOP-4.2.2.C-11/1/KONV-2012-0012: Smarter
Transport - IT for co-operative transport system. The
Project is supported by the Hungarian Government and
co-financed by the European Social Fund. This work was
supported in part by a by the Romanian Ministry of
Education, Research and Innovation through the PNII Idei
project 842/2008.
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