Vehicle Acceleration Prediction Based on Machine Learning Models and Driving Behavior Analysis

Driving behavior is one of the most critical factors in traffic accidents. Accurate vehicle acceleration prediction approaches can promote the development of Advanced Driving Assistance Systems (ADAS) and improve traffic safety. However, few prediction models consider the characteristics of individual drivers, which may overlook the potential heterogeneity of driving behavior. In this study, a vehicle acceleration prediction model based on machine learning methods and driving behavior analysis is proposed. First, the driving behavior data are preprocessed, and the relative distance, relative speed, and acceleration of the subject vehicle are selected as feature variables to describe the driving behavior. Then, a finite Mixture of Hidden Markov Model (MHMM) is used to divide the driving behavior semantics. The model can divide heterogeneous data into different behavioral semantic fragments within different time lengths. Next, the similarity of different behavioral semantic fragments is evaluated using the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test. In total, 10 homogenous drivers are classified as the first group, and the remaining 20 drivers are classified as the second group. Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) and Gate Recurrent Unit (GRU) are used to predict the vehicle acceleration for both groups. The prediction results show that the proposed method in this study can significantly improve the prediction accuracy of vehicle acceleration.