Unified decision-making and control for highway collision avoidance using active front steer and individual wheel torque control. Issue 8 (3rd August 2019) - Yuan, Hongliang
ABSTRACT: Collision avoidance is a crucial function for all ground vehicles, and using integrated chassis systems to support the driver presents a growing opportunity in active safety. With actuators such as in-wheel electric motors, active front steer and individual wheel brake control, there is an opportunity to develop integrated chassis systems that fully support the driver in safety critical situations. Here we consider the scenario of an impending frontal collision with a stationary or slower moving vehicle in the same driving lane. Traditionally, researchers have approached the required collision avoidance manoeuver as a hierarchical scheme, which separates the decision-making, path planning and path tracking. In this context, a key decision is whether to perform straight-line braking, or steer to change lanes, or indeed perform combined braking and steering. This paper approaches the collision avoidance directly from the perspective of constrained dynamic optimisation, using a single optimisation procedure to cover these aspects within a single online optimisation scheme of model predictive control (MPC). While the new approach is demonstrated in the context of a fully autonomous safety system, it is expected that the same approach can incorporate driver inputs as additional constraints, yielding a flexible and coherent driver assistance system.