AUTOMATED EMERGENCY STEERING USING CONTINUOUS GAIN EQUATIONS

Advanced vehicle control systems (AVCS) offer great potential to reduc e traffic congestion, decrease travel times, and increase safety. Auto mated lateral control is an integral part of AVCS. To date, most resea rch has focused on lateral control for lane and curve tracking, and la ne merging. To implement an automated control system, it must be able to sense and safely react to emergency situations. An emergency latera l control strategy is presented that accounts for changing vehicle spe ed using continuous gain equations. A linear vehicle/tyre model is use d in the development of a linear state model. A nonlinear vehicle/tyre model is used in the optimization of the feedback gains. Because the state model is velocity dependent, feedback gains are derived for disc rete vehicle speeds. These data points are then used to derive continu ous gain equations for the feedback gains. The performance using the g ain equations is compared to that of using constant gains. Conclusions are drawn about the performance and robustness of the controller usin g the continuous gain equations. Vehicle response is improved with the use of continuous gain equations, for both single and double lane cha nges.