GamePlan: Game-Theoretic Multi-Agent Planning with Human Drivers at Intersections, Roundabouts, and Merging

Abstract: We present a new method for multi-agent planning involving human drivers and autonomous vehicles (AVs) in unsignaled intersections, roundabouts, and during merging. In multi-agent planning, the main challenge is to predict the actions of other agents, especially human drivers, as their intentions are hidden from other agents. Our algorithm uses game theory to develop a new auction, called GamePlan, that directly determines the optimal action for each agent based on their driving style (which is observable via commonly available sensors). GamePlan assigns a higher priority to more aggressive or impatient drivers and a lower priority to more conservative or patient drivers; we theoretically prove that such an approach is game-theoretically optimal prevents collisions and deadlocks. We compare our approach with prior state-of-the-art auction techniques including economic auctions, time-based auctions (first-in first-out), and random bidding and show that each of these methods result in collisions among agents when taking into account driver behavior. We compare with methods based on DRL, deep learning, and game theory and present our benefits over these approaches. Finally, we show that our approach can be implemented in the real-world with human drivers.