Game Theoretic Analysis of Overtaking Maneuvers for Autonomous Vehicles with Moving Obstacles

This paper investigates the role of information exchange among autonomous vehicles (AVs) when performing emergency maneuvers and analyzes it with game theory. The scenario involves the vehicles encountering a randomly moving obstacle on a two-lane road. Both vehicles are capable of making smart informed decisions in an autonomic manner. They may swerve right or remain in their lane. Additionally, the vehicle in the left lane may get past the obstacle. The combination of these actions leads to different outcomes, framed as non-cooperative non-zero-sum strategic games. First, we consider a static game of complete information and then introduce additional random elements, thus creating a Bayesian game. The games are analyzed using the Nash equilibrium (NE) as the solution concept, discussing the role of getting past the obstacle. The investigation on whether this action changes the outcome can determine whether not only it should be implemented as a potential response to emergencies, but also it should be shared as information to the other autonomous agents.