Autonomous Driving
Autonomous-driving analysis follows one scenario from calibrated sensor signals to a world model, candidate futures, constrained motion, executed control, and a defined fallback when the primary path degrades.
Environment
Scenario and sensing
- road
- actor
- sensor
- map
- occlusion
World model
Perception and prediction
- object
- lane
- occupancy
- future state
Motion
Planning and control
- candidate
- cost
- trajectory
- command
Operations
Service and safety
- dispatcher
- operator
- fallback
- rider state
space + actors + condition
Scenario record
The environment and event that cause a planning or control decision.
candidates → cost → selection
Trajectory record
Alternative paths, constraints, selected motion, and time-dependent profiles.
degradation → fallback → recovery
Safety record
Detected condition, safe action, human involvement, and exit state.
task → resource → state
Fleet record
How vehicle and human resources are assigned, monitored, and recovered.
Calibrate
Camera, lidar, radar, or map data is synchronized and placed in a common coordinate frame.
Model
Objects, lanes, occupancy, confidence, and future states form an internal scene representation.
Select
Candidate trajectories are tested against kinematic, comfort, and safety constraints and a stated cost.
Execute
The selected trajectory becomes steering, acceleration, braking, or other vehicle commands.
Degrade
A monitored fault transfers control, narrows the safety envelope, or initiates a minimal-risk maneuver.
The trace keeps nominal planning, physical control, and fallback evidence connected while preserving their different triggers and states.
Why is a scenario better represented as a family than as one road image?
Variants can preserve the same road, actors, and identifiers while changing one constraint—occlusion, gap size, boundary type, signal state, or reachable stopping area—and showing the changed behavior.
- shared scene elements
- changed condition
- affected decision
- before / after behavior
How does a detected object become a vehicle trajectory?
Perception produces a world-model object; prediction adds candidate future states; planning maps constraints and costs to candidate trajectories; control converts the selected trajectory into vehicle commands.
- object schema and frame
- prediction horizon
- constraint set and cost
- selected command
What makes a fallback technically defined?
The record states the detected fault or degraded condition, the graded action, the handover or stopping constraint, and the state that permits recovery. Slowing, pulling over, and remote intervention are different branches.
- fault or trigger
- safety envelope
- handover timing
- recovery condition
A driving capability is described by two traceable paths: the nominal conversion of scene state into motion and the degraded conversion of a fault or uncertainty into a bounded fallback and recovery state.
Scenario variants isolate which environmental condition changes the vehicle decision.
Perception, prediction, planning, and control exchange different objects and should not be collapsed into one stack diagram.
A fallback becomes defined when trigger, graded action, operating constraint, human or fleet involvement, and exit state are connected.
- Scenario variants preserve shared elements and identify the changed condition.
- Sensor, world-model, prediction, and trajectory records use aligned frames and time.
- Fallback triggers, actions, and recovery criteria are stated at the same level of specificity.