AssistMe: Using policy iteration to improve shared control of a non-holonomic vehicle
Catalin Stefan Teodorescu, Tom Carlson · 2022 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMC) · 2022
An assist-as-needed semi-autonomous control algorithm is designed to address the problem of safely driving a vehicle (a power wheelchair) in an environment with static obstacles. The main idea is to maximize the human driver’s control experience while allowing them to navigate safely (the inputs do not lead to collisions). The proposed physically-inspired model-based obstacle avoidance algorithm relies on optimal maps of the expected time for executing a safe stop manoeuvre. These maps are pre-computed using policy iteration in the case of an experienced driver stochastic model. As the burden of complex calculations is handled offline, the online implementation of the algorithm requires little computing resources. Its efficiency is tested experimentally in a study with healthy participants: a statistically significant result confirmed that the proposed algorithm outperforms a baseline rule-based control. A discussion with pros and cons ends this paper.