An ontology-based approach to relax traffic regulation for autonomous
  vehicle assistance
  Traffic regulation must be respected by all vehicles, either human- or
computer- driven. However, extreme traffic situations might exhibit practical
cases in which a vehicle should safely and reasonably relax traffic regulation,
e.g., in order not to be indefinitely blocked and to keep circulating. In this
paper, we propose a high-level representation of an automated vehicle, other
vehicles and their environment, which can assist drivers in taking such
"illegal" but practical relaxation decisions. This high-level representation
(an ontology) includes topological knowledge and inference rules, in order to
compute the next high-level motion an automated vehicle should take, as
assistance to a driver. Results on practical cases are presented.
