Detecting lane change maneuvers using SHRP2 naturalistic driving data: A comparative study machine learning techniques.

Lane change has been recognized as a challenging driving maneuver and a significant component of traffic safety research. Developing a real-time continuous lane change detection system can assist drivers to perform and deal with complex driving tasks or provide assistance when it is needed the most. This study proposed trajectory-level lane change detection models based on features from vehicle kinematics, machine vision, roadway characteristics, and driver demographics under different weather conditions. To develop the models, the SHRP2 Naturalistic Driving Study (NDS) and Roadway Information Database (RID) datasets were utilized. Initially, descriptive statistics were utilized to investigate the lane change behavior, which revealed significant differences among different weather conditions for most of the parameters. Six data fusion categories were introduced for the first time, considering different data availability. In order to select relevant features in each category, Boruta, a wrapper-based algorithm was employed. The lane change detection models were trained, validated, and comparatively evaluated using four Machine Learning algorithms including Random Forest (RF), Support Vector Machine (SVM), Artificial Neural Network (ANN), and eXtrem Gradient Boosting (XGBoost). The results revealed that the highest overall detection accuracy was found to be 95.9 % using the XGBoost model when all the features were included in the model. Moreover, the highest overall detection accuracy of 81.9 % using the RF model was achieved considering only vehicle kinematics-based features, indicating that the proposed model could be utilized when other data are not available. Furthermore, the analysis of the impact of weather conditions on lane change detection suggested that incorporating weather could improve the accuracy of lane change detection. In addition, the analysis of early lane change detection indicated that the proposed algorithm could predict the lane changes within 5 s before the vehicles cross the lane line. The developed detection models could be used to monitor and control driver behavior in a Cooperative Automated Vehicle environment.