Patent ID: 11880201
Assignee: BAIDU USA LLC
Field: Control (Instruments)
Classification: CPC G | IPC G

Claim 7:
8. A non-transitory machine-readable medium having instructions stored therein, which when executed by a processor, cause the processor to perform operations of operating an autonomous driving vehicle (ADV), the operations comprising:
tracking, over a first time period from a first time instant to a second time instant, a plurality of vehicles traveling in a plurality of lanes, including determining at each perception cycle and for each of the plurality of vehicles, a lane in which the vehicle is traveling and a location within the lane in which the vehicle is traveling;
identifying, after the second time instant and for each of the plurality of lanes, a first quantity of representative vehicles within the plurality of vehicles that are representative of vehicles traveling in a first lane over the first time period and a second quantity of representative vehicles within the plurality of vehicles that are representative of vehicles traveling in a second lane over the first time period, wherein the first lane and the second lane are different lanes;
determining, by the processor, the first quantity of representative vehicles traveling in the first lane over the first time period is equal to or exceeds a threshold, wherein the threshold is 5 representative vehicles;
in response to determining the first quantity of representative vehicles traveling in the same first lane over the first time period is equal to or exceeds the threshold, determining, by the processor, a first average speed over the first time period of the representative vehicles associated with the first lane of the plurality of lanes;
determining, by the processor, the second quantity of representative vehicles traveling in the second lane over the first time period is equal to or exceeds the threshold;
in response to determining the second quantity of representative vehicles traveling in the second lane over the first time period is equal to or exceeds the threshold, determining, by the processor, a second average speed over the first time period of the representative vehicles associated with the second lane of the plurality of lanes;
determining, for each of the plurality of lanes including the first lane and the second lane, each average speed including the first average speed and the second average speed over the first time period of the representative vehicles associated with each of the plurality of lanes;
identifying, by the processor, a target lane with a fastest average speed based on each average speed of the representative vehicles associated with each of the plurality of lanes for possible lane changing
planning a trajectory for the ADV to change into the target lane with the fastest average speed; and
controlling, by the processor, the ADV to navigate according to the trajectory.