Driving with Regulation: Interpretable Decision-Making for Autonomous Vehicles with Retrieval-Augmented Reasoning via LLM

Abstract: This work presents an interpretable decision-making framework for autonomous vehicles that integrates traffic regulations, norms, and safety guidelines comprehensively and enables seamless adaptation to different regions. While traditional rule-based methods struggle to incorporate the full scope of traffic rules, we develop a Traffic Regulation Retrieval (TRR) Agent based on Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) to automatically retrieve relevant traffic rules and guidelines from extensive regulation documents and relevant records based on the ego vehicle's situation. Given the semantic complexity of the retrieved rules, we also design a reasoning module powered by a LLM to interpret these rules, differentiate between mandatory rules and safety guidelines, and assess actions on legal compliance and safety. Additionally, the reasoning is designed to be interpretable, enhancing both transparency and reliability. The framework demonstrates robust performance on both hypothesized and real-world cases across diverse scenarios, along with the ability to adapt to different regions with ease.