Autonomous Lateral Control of Vehicles in an Automated Highway System

Lateral control of vehicles in IVHS requires the installation of on-board sensors as well as the installation of roadway hardware such as cables, magnets, etc. Existing control approaches in PATH require road curvature and vehicle lateral position (with respect to the center of the lane) information. Hence these approaches rely on roadway sensors to obtain relative lateral position. These methods will necessitate infrastructural changes to the highway.

This paper introduces the concept of autonomous lateral control or auto-tracking. The method allows us to use only line-of-sight sensor information to effect vehicle control. We present a detailed vehicle model. Controllers have been proposed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed auto-tracking scheme. We also examine the possibilities of using this method for lane change purposes in an automated highway system.     

Effects of Model Complexity on the Performance of Automated Vehicle Steering Controllers: Controller Development and Evaluation

SUMMARY

Due to increased traffic congestion and travel times, research in Advanced Vehicle Control Systems (AVCS) has focused on automated lateral and headway control. Automated vehicles are seen as a way to increase freeway capacity and vehicle speeds while reducing accidents due to human error. Recent research in automated lateral control has focused on vehicle control during low-g maneuvers. To increase safety, automated lateral controllers will need to recognize and react to emergency situations.

This paper investigates the effects of vehicle and tire model order on the response of automated vehicles to an emergency step lane change using a controller based on linear vehicle and tire models. From these studies it is concluded that control strategies based solely on linear vehicle and tire models are inadequate for emergency vehicle maneuvers.

A strategy is then proposed to automatically control vehicles through emergency maneuvers. Here the response of a nonlinear vehicle model is used with a linear state model to optimize controller gains for nonlinear maneuvers. An emergency step lane change is used as a preliminary test of the method.     

Effects of Model Complexity on the Performance of Automated Vehicle Steering Controllers: Model Development,Validation and Comparison

SUMMARY

Recent research on autonomous highway vehicles has begun to focus on lateral control strategies. The initial work has focused on vehicle control during low-g maneuvers at constant vehicle speed, typical of lane merging and normal highway driving. In this paper, and its companion paper, to follow, the lateral control of vehicles during high-g emergency maneuvers is addressed. Models of the vehicle dynamics are developed, showing the accuracy of the different models under low and high-g conditions. Specifically, body roll, tire and drive-train dynamics, tire force saturation, and tire side force lag are shown to be important effects to include in models for emergency maneuvers. Current controllers, designed for low-g maneuvers only, neglect these effects. The follow on paper demonstrates the performance of lateral controllers during high-g lateral emergency maneuvers using these vehicle models.     

Brain limbic system-based intelligent controller application to lane change manoeuvre

This paper presents the application of a novel neuromorphic control strategy for lane change manoeuvres in the highway environment. The lateral dynamics of a vehicle with and without wind disturbance are derived and utilised to implement a control strategy based on the brain limbic system. To show the robustness of the proposed controller, several disturbance conditions including wind, uncertainty in the cornering stiffness, and changes in the vehicle mass are investigated. To demonstrate the performance of the suggested strategy, simulation results of the proposed method are compared with the human driver model-based control scheme, which has been discussed in the literature. The simulation results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed controller in energy efficiency, driving comfort, and robustness.     

Analyses of Vision-based Lateral Control for Automated Highway System

SUMMARY

The stability and performance of a vision-based vehicle lateral control system are analyzed. Effects of look-ahead distance, vision delay, and vehicle speed on the performance of vision feedback control system are examined by using frequency domain and time domain methods. A measurement model of the vision system is derived from the point of view of multiple sensors. The quantization error of the vision system is analyzed and the way of extracting essential information for control is studied. Based on this analysis, some guidelines for the design of vision-based controllers are proposed. A design example is further illustrated for a vision system with a substantial time delay.     

Optimal control of brakes and steering for autonomous collision avoidance using modified Hamiltonian algorithm

ABSTRACT

This paper considers the problem of collision avoidance for road vehicles, operating at the limits of friction. A two-level modelling and control methodology is proposed, with the upper level using a friction-limited particle model for motion planning, and the lower level using a nonlinear 3DOF model for optimal control allocation. Motion planning adopts a two-phase approach: the first phase is to avoid the obstacle, the second is to recover lane keeping with minimal additional lateral deviation. This methodology differs from the more standard approach of path-planning/path-following, as there is no explicit path reference used; the control reference is a target acceleration vector which simultaneously induces changes in direction and speed. The lower level control distributes vehicle targets to the brake and steer actuators via a new and efficient method, the Modified Hamiltonian Algorithm (MHA). MHA balances CG acceleration targets with yaw moment tracking to preserve lateral stability. A nonlinear 7DOF two-track vehicle model confirms the overall validity of this novel methodology for collision avoidance.     

基于可拓切换控制方法的智能车辆车道保持系统研究（双语出版）

针对道路曲率变化范围较大时，智能车辆在大曲率道路工况车道保持控制精度低的问题，提出一种基于可拓切换控制理论的智能车辆车道保持控制系统，该车道保持系统由上层可拓控制器和下层控制器两部分组成。在上层可拓控制器中，通过车道线检测得到车辆相对于道路的位置信息和道路曲率信息。根据可拓集合理论，选取预瞄点处横向位置偏差和前方道路曲率值作为可拓集合的特征值并划分可拓集合，求解关联函数，并根据关联函数值将车辆-道路系统状态分为经典域、可拓域和非域。在下层控制器中，在经典域采用基于横向位置偏差和航向偏差的PID反馈控制器，在可拓域中采用基于前方道路曲率的PID前馈-反馈控制器，非域中车辆-道路系统处于完全失控状态，采取紧急制动。2种仿真工况结果表明：相比于单一PID反馈控制，提出的车道保持控制系统，有效抑制了在大曲率道路下的跟踪误差值，提高了智能驾驶汽车在时变曲率的道路工况下车道保持控制精度和工况适应性。     

A new shared control for lane keeping and road departure prevention

In recent years, the driver's active assistances have become important features in commercialised vehicles. In this paper, we present one of these features which consists of an advanced driver assistance system for lane keeping. A thorough analysis of its performance and stability with respect to variations in driver behaviour will be given. Firstly, the lateral control model based on visual preview is established and the kinematics model based on visual preview, including speed and other factors, is used to calculate the lateral error and direction error. Secondly, and according to the characteristics of the lateral control, an efficient strategy of intelligent electric vehicle lateral mode is proposed. The integration of the vehicle current lateral error and direction error is chosen as the parameter of the sliding mode switching function to design the sliding surface. The control variables are adjusted according to the fuzzy control rules to ensure that they meet the existence and reaching condition. A new fuzzy logic-based switching strategy with an efficient control law is also proposed to ensure a level of continuous and variable sharing according to the state of the driver and the vehicle positioning on the roadway. The proposed control law acts either at the centre of the lane, as a lane keeping assistance system to reduce the driver's workload for long trips, or as a lane departure avoidance system that intervenes for unintended lane departures. Simulation results are included in this paper to explain this concept.     

Modified lateral control of an autonomous vehicle by look-ahead and look-down sensing

This paper presents a modified lateral control method for an autonomous vehicle with both look-ahead and look-down sensing systems. To cope with sensor noise and modeling uncertainty in the lateral control of the vehicle, a modified LMI-based H lateral controller was proposed, which uses the look-ahead information of the lateral offset error measured at the front of vehicle and the look-down information of the vehicle yaw angle error between the reference lane and the centerline of the vehicle. To verify the safety and the performance of the lateral control, a scaled-down vehicle was developed, and the positioning of the vehicle was estimated with USAT. The proposed controller, which uses both look-ahead and look-down information, was tested for lane changing and reference lane tracking with both simulation and experiment. The simulation and experimental results show that the proposed controller has better tracking and handling performance compared with a controller that uses only the look-ahead information of the target heading angle error.     

Additional 4WS and Driver Interaction

SUMMARY

This investigation is based on a complex 4-wheel vehicle model of a passenger car that includes steering system and drive train. The tyre properties are described for all possible combined longitudinal and lateral slip values and for arbitrary friction conditions. The active part is an additional steering system of all 4 wheels, additionally to the driver's steering wheel angle input. Three control levels are used for the driver model that thereby can follow a given trajectory or avoid an obstacle.

The feedback control of the additional 4 wheel steering is based on an observer which can also have adaptive characteristics. Moreover a virtual vehicle model in a feedforward scheme can provide desired steering characteristics.

To get information for critical situations a cornering manoeuvre with sudden u-split conditions is simulated. Further a similar manoeuvre is used to evaluate the reentry in a high friction area from low friction conditions. And finally the performance of the controller is shown in a severe lane change manoeuvre.     

Analysis of Automatic Steering Control for Highway Vehicles with Look-down Lateral Reference Systems

SUMMARY

In this paper, steering control for passenger cars on automated highways is analyzed, concentrating on look-down reference systems. Extension of earlier experimental results for low speed to highway speed is shown to be non-trivial. The limitations of pure output-feedback of lateral vehicle displacement from the road reference are examined under practical constraints and performance requirements like robustness, maximum lateral error and comfort. The in-depth system analysis directly leads to a new alternative design direction which allows to preserve look-ahead reference systems for highway speed automatic driving.     

Roadway Elevation Profile Generation for Vehicle Simulation

SUMMARY

With a simplified approach for creating road surface elevation information for simulation of vehicle vertical response to roadway unevenness, roadways for single and parallel track simulations and averaged roads for variable velocity simulation are developed. Sets of correctly chosen random roadway slopes are averaged appropriately for the variable velocity simulation. The procedure generates approximately “white” slope spectral density roadways in the frequency ranges of interest, and the elevation profiles are representative of average road profiles. The method is simple in practice yet suffices for many parameter studies of suspensions and vehicle dynamics.     

基于注意力Seq2Seq网络的高速公路交织区车辆变道轨迹预测

针对交通状态复杂的高速公路交织区域,经验丰富的驾驶人能够通过正确地推断周围车辆的未来运动进行及时的车道变换,这对于实现安全高效的自动驾驶至关重要,然而目前的自动驾驶车辆往往缺乏这种预测能力。为此,基于深度学习理论,提出了一种结合注意力机制和编-解码器结构的交织区车辆强制性变道轨迹预测方法,利用Next Generation Simulation（NGSIM）数据集提取车辆变道过程中的关键特征,并引入碰撞时间（Time to Collision,TTC）和避免碰撞减速度（Deceleration Rate to Avoid a Crash,DRAC）2种风险指标,将变道车辆及其周围车辆视为一个整体状态单元,同时补全状态单元内部不同车辆在横向和纵向上的时空状态特征,从而更有效地刻画车辆间的动态交互行为;然后将不同观测车辆的连续窗口序列输入基于长短期记忆网络（Long Short-term Memory,LSTM）的编-解码器,预测交织区车辆变道的未来运动轨迹,通过添加软注意力模块,使模型能够集中聚焦于影响车辆在不同时刻下位置变化的关键信息,再现了真实交通场景下车辆的变道行为。试验验证表明：基于注意力机制的编-解码器模型与当前流行的卷积长短期记忆网络、极限梯度提升树等模型相比具有更高的轨迹预测精度,在长时域的变道轨迹拟合上有显著的优越性,为辅助和自动驾驶领域的发展提供了新思路。     

Development of a path planning system using mean shift algorithm for driver assistance

The longitudinal and lateral vehicle control techniques have been widely used in several active driver assistance systems. The adaptive cruise control, lane keeping assistant control, vehicle platooning and stop-and-go control are typical examples of the most important applications. In this study, a novel path planning method is proposed considering the driving environment such as road shape, ego vehicle and surrounding vehicles’ movement. The relative distance and velocity between the ego vehicle and surrounding vehicles are identified with respect to the predicted lane shape in front of the ego vehicle. Based on the identified information, the road shape and surrounding vehicles are mapped into the intensity image and the desired vector for the ego vehicle’s movement is determined by the maximum intensity density tracing method. The desired vehicle path is followed by the acceleration/deceleration control and the steering assist control, respectively. In order to evaluate the performance of the proposed system, simulations are conducted and compared with ACC systems.     

Vehicle detection system design based on stereo vision sensors

Vehicle detection is a crucial issue for driver assistance system as well as for autonomous vehicle guidance function and it has to be performed with high reliability to avoid any potential collision. The vision-based vehicle detection systems are regarded promising for this purpose because they require little infrastructure on a highway. However, the feasibility of these systems in passenger car requires accurate and robust sensing performance. In this paper, a vehicle detection system using stereo vision sensors is developed. This system utilizes feature extraction, epipoplar constraint and feature matching in order to robustly detect the initial corresponding pairs. The proposed system can detect a leading vehicle in front and can estimate its position parameters such as the distance and heading angle. After the initial detection, the system executes the tracking algorithm for the vehicles in the lane. The proposed vehicle detection system is implemented on a passenger car and its performances are verified experimentally.     

The Steering Characteristics of Multiple Axle Bogie Systems

SUMMARY

Legislation limits the load that may be transferred to the roadway by the axies of a commercial vehicle and this has resulted in the development of multi axle bogies for both the tractor and trailer units of articulated vehicles and at the rear of rigid vehicles, some of these bogies contain self steering or articulation steered axles

Experience shows that the tyre wear characteristics of multi axle bogies may be unsatisfactory. The paper analyses the role of such bogies in the context of vehicle handling and shows how the lateral tyre forces vary between the axles. An hypotheses relating the forces in a steady state turn to wear is given. The analysis may also be applied to the general case of vehicle handling.     

自动驾驶汽车基础测试场景构建研究（双语出版）

针对L2/L3级自动驾驶汽车的仿真测试和封闭场地测试认证需求，结合现有L2/L3级自动驾驶汽车量产车型的主要功能特点，提出自动驾驶汽车基础测试场景群的构建方法。首先针对指定的道路交通环境，分析主车和周围交通参与者可能的相对位置和运动方向的组合，确定复杂场景群。其次分别以主车功能所确定的各个可能运动方向，依此与各干扰车辆的可能运动方向（包括任一干扰车辆不存在的情形）进行组合，组合时采用PICT组合测试工具，并添加必要的运动约束条件，选择参数组合覆盖标准自动生成全部的组合场景群。最后结合场景筛选规则，筛选出具有测试价值的覆盖各个层级及功能的基础测试场景群。采用场景构建方法，对于主车处于三车道中间车道的路段场景和无红绿灯的十字路口场景，分别构建62种和33种基础测试场景。根据驾驶人行为特性、交通规则、汽车在城市、郊区和高速公路工况下的典型车速、加减速度、横向加速度、交通事故和自然驾驶数据库的有关场景数据等，设计主车换道工况的测试用例。采用模型预测控制框架建立主车局部路径规划和控制仿真模型，并对主车危险换道场景进行仿真。研究结果表明：主车在邻车道前车大减速的情况下实现了减速换道并避免了与本车道前车和邻车道前后车的碰撞，同时跟踪到期望跟车间距，验证了该换道测试用例的有效性。     

基于车辆动力学模型的换道轨迹规划研究

针对自动驾驶车辆换道轨迹规划时的操纵稳定性问题，基于CarSim/Simulink仿真平台建立了车辆动力学模型，构建了轨迹规划系统框架，通过轨迹信息后处理并提出了目标函数设计，进行了横向控制序列采样以保证车辆的稳定与极限性能，完成了算法对轨迹的综合评价选优。随后开展了仿真试验，对比分析了轨迹跟踪控制系统下的实际轨迹、最优规划方法所规划的换道轨迹。仿真结果表明，该轨迹规划系统框架及算法模型能有效提高车辆的操纵稳定性，可实现冰雪路面等极端工况下自动驾驶车辆换道轨迹规划。     

On model-based longitudinal feed-forward motion control for low velocities on known road profiles

ABSTRACT

So far, longitudinal motion control has focused on situations like highway driving, where disturbances of the road profile can be neglected. In this paper, we show how the Two Point Tire Model can be used to derive a novel feed-forward control law for a vehicle's longitudinal motion that considers the effects of the road profile and can complement existing control approaches. For this purpose, we recapitulate the basic model assumptions and equations and briefly discuss how it can be used on arbitrary road profiles. Two approaches for implementation in a real vehicle are presented. Comparisons of these approaches in simulation and to a human driver of an experimental vehicle show that the controller can deal with stepped obstacles of up to 14?cm in height. However, the control performance is essentially limited by the actuator delay and human drivers outperform the controller due to their ability of sensing subtle vehicle motions. The results indicate that the control performance can be further improved by using a preview on the necessary drive torque, which can be provided by the solution that we propose.     

面向动态避障的智能汽车滚动时域路径规划

为解决城市低速条件下智能汽车在避障过程中的路径规划问题，提出面向动态避障的智能汽车滚动时域路径规划方法。首先，划分车道可行区域，利用3次拉格朗日插值法拟合车道边界，并根据"车-路"的相对位置关系将车道区域进一步划分为车道间区域与车道内区域两部分。其次，以区域虚拟力场进行动态交通场景模拟，包括在障碍车周身沿车道方向的虚拟矩形区域斥力场，行驶目标位置的虚拟引力场和车道保持虚拟区域引力场3个部分，然后结合划分的车道区域确定各虚拟力场的作用区域。再次，建立主车动力学与运动学模型，障碍车运动学预测模型，把主车与障碍车无碰撞，主车行驶在车道内区域，趋向目标位置以及保证车辆稳定性作为优化目标，综合车辆模型的控制输入、状态变量等动力学约束条件，构建多目标的滚动时域控制器用于车辆避障路径规划，求解获得前轮转角作为控制量。最后，利用MATLAB和veDYNA软件对提出的路径规划控制系统分别在静态障碍和动态障碍工况下进行联合仿真。研究结果表明：该方法能够很好地解决躲避静态障碍和低速动态障碍车的问题，控制车辆驶向目标位置，并且在避障过程中满足车辆的动力学约束，同时又不会与道路边界发生碰撞，保证了车辆的安全性和稳定性。