[2603.27273] Robust Global-Local Behavior Arbitration via Continuous Command Fusion Under LiDAR Errors

Computer Science > Robotics arXiv:2603.27273 (cs) [Submitted on 28 Mar 2026] Title:Robust Global-Local Behavior Arbitration via Continuous Command Fusion Under LiDAR Errors Authors:Mohamed Elgouhary, Amr S. El-Wakeel View a PDF of the paper titled Robust Global-Local Behavior Arbitration via Continuous Command Fusion Under LiDAR Errors, by Mohamed Elgouhary and Amr S. El-Wakeel View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:Modular autonomous driving systems must coordinate global progress objectives with local safety-driven reactions under imperfect sensing and strict real-time constraints. This paper presents a ROS2-native arbitration module that continuously fuses the outputs of two unchanged and interpretable controllers: a global reference-tracking controller based on Pure Pursuit and a reactive LiDAR-based Gap Follow controller. At each control step, both controllers propose Ackermann commands, and a PPO-trained policy predicts a continuous gate from a compact feature observation to produce a single fused drive command, augmented with practical safety checks. For comparison under identical ROS topic inputs and control rate, we implement a lightweight sampling-based predictive baseline. Robustness is evaluated using a ROS2 impairment protocol that injects LiDAR noise, delay, and dropout, and additionally sweeps forward-cone false short-range outliers. In a repeatable close-proximity passing scenario, we report safe success and failure rates together with per-step end-to-end co...