Combining Reinforcement Learning with Model Predictive Control for On-Ramp Merging
We consider the problem of designing an algorithm to allow a car to autonomously merge on to a highway from an on-ramp. Two broad classes of techniques have been proposed to solve motion planning problems in autonomous driving: Model Predictive Control (MPC) and Reinforcement Learning (RL)...
In this paper, we first establish the strengths and weaknesses of state-of-the-art MPC and RL-based techniques through simulations. We show that the performance of the RL agent is worse than that of the MPC solution from the perspective of safety and robustness to out-of-distribution traffic patterns, i.e., traffic patterns which