Semi-Cooperative Control for Autonomous Emergency Vehicles

Autonomous control of an emergency vehicle will save lives through faster transport and shorter response. Towards this goal, it must overcome the challenge of interacting with existing human drivers on the road. We present a game-theoretic approach for semi-cooperative control of an autonomous emergency vehicle that can interact efficiently with humans on the road. We model the interactions between autonomous and human driven cars with Social Value Orientation, a metric from social psychology, that allows the controller to leverage their influence on the trajectories of neighboring human drivers. In addition, by using a modified version of iterative best response, we direct the algorithm to converge to Nash equilibria that are cooperative. We demonstrate the efficacy of our algorithm in simulations of drivers in traffic, with a variety of traffic densities and driver personalities. In simulations of prosocial human drivers, our algorithm provides an 8% improvement in distance-traveled compared to egoistic human drivers.