Autonomous Driving with Priority-Ordered STL Specifications Under Multimodal Uncertainty

2026-06-18

AI Summary

This work addresses the challenge of multi-objective conflicts—among safety, comfort, and traffic rule compliance—in safety-critical autonomous driving scenarios, compounded by the multimodal uncertainty inherent in predicting trajectories of other traffic participants. The paper proposes a trajectory planning framework that uniquely integrates lexicographic-priority signal temporal logic (STL) specifications with model predictive path integral (MPPI) control, combining uncertainty-aware planning with hierarchical STL constraints for the first time. By resolving conflicting specifications according to a predefined importance hierarchy, the method generates trajectories that remain safe, legally compliant, and comfortable even under multimodal prediction uncertainty. Simulation results demonstrate the robustness and effectiveness of the approach in complex, interactive traffic scenarios.

Abstract

Autonomous vehicles must plan trajectories that satisfy a multitude of requirements on safety, passenger comfort, and compliance with traffic rules. However, in safety-critical scenarios, it is not always possible to satisfy all requirements simultaneously, necessitating their prioritization based on importance. At the same time, in these safety-critical scenarios, the uncertainty in trajectory predictions of the surrounding traffic, such as other vehicles and pedestrians, should be explicitly accounted for. In this work, we propose an uncertainty-aware trajectory planning framework that incorporates a predefined lexicographic ordering over Signal Temporal Logic (STL) specifications that stays valid under uncertainty. We implement this formulation with Model Predictive Path Integral (MPPI) control and we demonstrate the effectiveness of our method on simulation scenarios, showing that our framework efficiently handles conflicting objectives under realistic multi-modal uncertainty.

Problem

• autonomous driving
• priority-ordered specifications
• multimodal uncertainty
• safety-critical scenarios
• trajectory planning

Innovation

• Signal Temporal Logic
• lexicographic prioritization
• multimodal uncertainty
• trajectory planning
• MPPI control