Reinforcement Learning Decision-Making for Autonomous Vehicles Based on Semantic Segmentation

In the complex and stochastic traffic flow, ensuring safe driving requires improvements in perception and decision-making. This paper proposed a decision-control method that leveraged the scene perception and understanding capabilities of semantic segmentation networks and the stable convergence strategies of Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) algorithms to achieve more accurate and effective autonomous driving decision-control. Perception features obtained from cameras and sensors equipped with a semantic segmentation model were used as input for the intelligent agent. DRL algorithms were employed to update decisions based on reward feedback. Experimental results on the CARLA simulation platform demonstrated that the semantic segmentation network effectively identified obstacles, vehicles, and drivable areas, providing high-quality perception data input for the intelligent agent’s decision-making model. Compared to the original algorithms, the proposed Double Deep Q-Network-Semantic Segmentation (DDQN-SS) and Proximal Policy Optimization-Semantic Segmentation (PPO-SS) increased the reward value by approximately 25% and enhanced driving stability by 14.2% and 28.5%, respectively, enabling more stable and precise decision-control during driving. The method proposed in this paper has better improved the decision-control performance of PPO and DDQN in complex scenarios.