Work place: Department of Computer Science and Engineering, GITAM Deemed to be University, Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh 530045, India
E-mail: mthalata@gitam.edu
Website:
Research Interests:
Biography
Dr. T. M. N. Vamsi is working as Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at GITAM Deemed to be University, Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh. He received his PhD in Computer Science and Engineering from JNTUH, Hyderabad in the year 2016. He is having 24 years of teaching, research, and administrative experience in various technical higher education Institutions. His research interests are in the development of protocols for the Internet of Things and vehicular networks, Soft Computing and Bioinformatics.
By Lakshmi Narayana T. M. N. Vamsi
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5815/ijisa.2026.05.05, Pub. Date: 8 Oct. 2026
The new hierarchical path planning and tracking control model for autonomous vehicles utilizes hybrid optimization techniques, an adaptive potential field approach, and reinforcement learning to achieve safe, efficient, and adaptive path planning of the vehicles. Initially, a dynamic environment is generated to process path planning and traffic control with obstacles. The global path is computed using the Hybrid Dung Beetle and Hippopotamus Optimization (HDBHP) algorithm for minimum path distance, minimum obstacles, and minimum energy. This path is smoothed using Robust Locally Weighted Regression with Curvature Smoothing (RLWR-CS) to fulfill the vehicle kinematic constraints and obtain smoothness. For real-time local modulation, the Tent Map-Artificial Potential Field (TM-APF) approach is used, which is sensitive to obstacles and uses a chaotic path to plan for a better response. Control is done through Goal-Conditional Q-learning (GCQL) and Prioritized Q-learning (PQL), where decision-making is made with specific goals and prioritized experience replay. An integrated reward function ensures that the path is accurate, safe, fast, and comfortable for the passengers and ensures that the vehicle adapts to the roads from the start to the destination. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed approach achieves improved Cumulative Rewards of 171.704 at episode 968 and 196.141 at episode 9,251. Also, the presented approach has a lower execution time of 1.65 seconds and outperforms existing approaches such as Double Deep Q-Network (DDQN), Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO), Deep Q-Networks (DQN), and Soft Actor-Critic (SAC).
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