SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR ONLINE, TASK-AWARE OPPONENT MODELING IN AUTONOMOUS RACING

A method for an online, task-aware opponent modeling in autonomous racing is described. The method includes concurrently training an opponent-aware policy and an opponent-aware encoder using reinforcement learning. The method also includes calculating, by the opponent-aware encoder, opponent encoding information according to prior opponent positions. The method further includes updating learning parameters of the opponent-aware policy using the opponent encoding information from the opponent-aware encoder to predict actions. The method also includes updating a posterior network according to an auxiliary mutual information loss between the actions predicted by the opponent-aware policy and the opponent encoding information from the opponent-aware encoder.