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Dong Bi

Publications and source records attributed to Dong Bi.

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Integrated Graph Search and Model Predictive Control for Smooth and Efficient Path Planning in Autonomous Vehicles

Path planning is a fundamental component of autonomous vehicles, where achieving safe, comfortable, and dynamically feasible paths while ensuring computational efficiency remains a significant challenge. This paper presents a sequential path planning framework in which a rough path obtained from graph search is explicitly exploited to guide a Model Predictive Control (MPC)-based path refinement. A rough path is first obtained via Dijkstra search on a discretized grid and is then used to construct a spatially varying convex lateral safety corridor that explicitly captures obstacle avoidance constraints, transforming discrete obstacle avoidance decisions into continuous feasibility constraints for optimization. Within this corridor, an MPC problem is formulated to refine the path, enabling efficient optimization while maintaining path smoothness by penalizing the third-order spatial derivative of the lateral offset over a prediction horizon. The proposed algorithm is evaluated in multiple overtaking scenarios on both straight and curved roads, including cases with single and multiple target vehicles, using high-fidelity environment simulations (i.e., CarMaker). Compared with the previous study, which used polynomial fitting and a quadratic programming method, the proposed approach consistently achieves lower lateral acceleration, curvature, and jerk while reducing computational cost by 28.08% on straight roads and 29.52% on curved roads. These results demonstrate that exploiting graph-search structure within an MPC formulation provides an effective balance between path smoothness and computational efficiency for autonomous vehicles in structured driving environments.

cs.RO

A Large-Language-Model Supported Personalized Driving Framework for Lane Change in Highway Scenarios

Personalized driving can improve the user acceptance of automated driving systems. However, existing methods still provide limited support for translating natural-language driving preferences, especially when such preferences are expressed implicitly, into executable and distinguishable driving behaviors. This paper proposes a large language model (LLM)-supported personalized driving framework for highway lane-change scenarios. The framework maps natural-language driving commands to executable planning parameters in the open-source Apollo automated driving stack according to three driving styles: aggressive, normal, and conservative. To establish this mapping, candidate planning parameters are evaluated based on the resulting lane-change behaviors, and style-specific parameter sets are constructed through clustering and style-intensity ranking. For command interpretation, a retrieval dataset is constructed to support retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), enabling LLM-based interpretation of implicit user commands. Experimental results show that the derived parameter sets generate distinguishable personalized lane-change behaviors, while RAG consistently improves preference interpretation, particularly for implicit commands. These results indicate the potential of integrating LLM-based natural-language interaction with Apollo to support personalized lane-change behavior generation. The source code and the relevant datasets are available at: https://github.com/ftgTUGraz/LLM-Personalized-Driving.

cs.RO

Automated Digital Twin Construction for Highway Scenarios Using LiDAR Point Clouds and OpenStreetMap

Accurate road environment modeling is fundamental to the simulation and validation of automated driving systems. However, constructing road maps in standardized formats such as ASAM OpenDRIVE from real-world sensor data remains a time-consuming and costly process. Mobile mapping LiDAR captures accurate lane-level geometry but is confined to the driven corridor, while OpenStreetMap (OSM) provides broad road network topology but lacks geometric precision at the lane level. To address this, an automated workflow is proposed to fuse LiDAR point clouds with OSM data to generate georeferenced ASAM OpenDRIVE maps of highway environments, requiring minimal manual intervention. The pipeline reconstructs mainline roads from LiDAR-derived measurements and infers ramp geometry and topology from the OSM road graph, enabling complete highway interchange modeling without full sensor coverage. Experiments demonstrate a mean lateral RMSE of 0.740 m, and the generated maps are directly usable in mainstream simulation platforms including IPG CarMaker and Esmini. These results validate the effectiveness of combining measurement-derived geometry with map-derived topology for automated OpenDRIVE digital twin generation. The project code is available at https://github.com/ftgTUGraz/opendrive-digital-twin-generator

cs.RO

A Comparative Evaluation of Large Vision-Language Models for 2D Object Detection under SOTIF Conditions

Reliable environmental perception remains one of the main obstacles for safe operation of automated vehicles. Safety of the Intended Functionality (SOTIF) concerns safety risks from perception insufficiencies, particularly under adverse conditions where conventional detectors often falter. While Large Vision-Language Models (LVLMs) demonstrate promising semantic reasoning, their quantitative effectiveness for safety-critical 2D object detection is underexplored. This paper presents a systematic evaluation of ten representative LVLMs using the PeSOTIF dataset, a benchmark specifically curated for long-tail traffic scenarios and environmental degradations. Performance is quantitatively compared against two specialized detectors: the anchor-based YOLOv5 and the transformer-based RT-DETRv4. Experimental results reveal a critical trade-off: top-performing LVLMs (e.g., Gemini 3) surpass the YOLOv5 in recall by over 25% and closely match RT-DETRv4 under natural visual degradation, while specialized detectors retain an advantage in geometric precision for handcrafted perturbations. These findings highlight the complementary strengths of semantic reasoning versus geometric regression, supporting the use of LVLMs as high-level safety validators in SOTIF-oriented automated driving systems.

cs.CV

Toward a Full-Stack Co-Simulation Platform for Testing of Automated Driving Systems

Virtual testing has emerged as an effective approach to accelerate the deployment of automated driving systems. Nevertheless, existing simulation toolchains encounter difficulties in integrating rapid, automated scenario generation with simulation environments supporting advanced automated driving capabilities. To address this limitation, a full-stack toolchain is presented, enabling automatic scenario generation from real-world datasets and efficient validation through a co-simulation platform based on CarMaker, ROS, and Apollo. The simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed toolchain. A demonstration video showcasing the toolchain is available at the provided link: https://youtu.be/taJw_-CmSiY.

cs.RO

A Survey on the Application of Large Language Models in Scenario-Based Testing of Automated Driving Systems

The safety and reliability of Automated Driving Systems (ADSs) must be validated prior to large-scale deployment. Among existing validation approaches, scenario-based testing has been regarded as a promising method to improve testing efficiency and reduce associated costs. Recently, the emergence of Large Language Models (LLMs) has introduced new opportunities to reinforce this approach. While an increasing number of studies have explored the use of LLMs in the field of automated driving, a dedicated review focusing on their application within scenario-based testing remains absent. This survey addresses this gap by systematically categorizing the roles played by LLMs across various phased of scenario-based testing, drawing from both academic research and industrial practice. In addition, key characteristics of LLMs and corresponding usage strategies are comprehensively summarized. The paper concludes by outlining five open challenges and potential research directions. To support ongoing research efforts, a continuously updated repository of recent advancements and relevant open-source tools is made available at: https://github.com/ftgTUGraz/LLM4ADSTest.

cs.SE