This study proposes an autonomous lane-changing system for congested merging areas. Manual and autonomous vehicles are expected to coexist until all vehicles are substituted by autonomous vehicles. Therefore, interactions between humans and autonomous driving systems should be discussed. This study assumed a scenario in which an autonomous vehicle performed a lane change to a congested main lane, where all vehicles were manual. The proposed system estimated the possibility of changing lanes without collisions. A driving simulator was used to measure the lane-changing operations of human drivers in a congested merging area, and the proposed method was developed based on the experimental results. Simulations demonstrated that the proposed method could safely change lanes.

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