Consideration of risks in active sensing for an autonomous vehicle

An autonomous-vehicle system comprising:

• one or more sensors;
• a computer system configured to:
• use information provided by the one or more sensors for one or more control processes of an autonomous vehicle;
• determine an information-improvement expectation that corresponds to an active-sensing action, wherein the active-sensing action comprises an action that is performable by the autonomous vehicle to potentially improve the information upon which at least one of the control processes for the autonomous vehicle is based;
• determine a risk cost that corresponds to the active-sensing action;
• and
• based on both (i) the information-improvement expectation for the active-sensing action and (ii) the risk cost for the active-sensing action, determine whether the active-sensing action is advisable.

A non-transitory computer-readable medium having program instructions stored thereon that are executable by at least one processor, the program instructions comprising:

• instructions for receiving information from one or more sensors of an autonomous vehicle, wherein one or more control processes for the autonomous vehicle are based upon the information;
• instructions for determining an information-improvement expectation that corresponds to an active-sensing action, wherein the active-sensing action comprises an action that is performable by the autonomous vehicle to potentially improve the information upon which at least one of the control processes for the autonomous vehicle is based;
• instructions for determining a risk cost that corresponds to the active-sensing action;
• and
• instructions for, based on both (i) the information-improvement expectation for the active-sensing action and (ii) the risk cost for the active-sensing action, determining whether the active-sensing action is advisable.