EFFECTS OF MODEL COMPLEXITY ON THE PERFORMANCE OF AUTOMATED VEHICLE STEERING CONTROLLERS - MODEL DEVELOPMENT, VALIDATION AND COMPARISON

Recent research on autonomous highway vehicles has begun to focus on l ateral control strategies. The initial work has focused on vehicle con trol 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 emerge ncy maneuvers is addressed. Models of the vehicle dynamics are develop ed, showing the accuracy of the different models under low and high-g conditions. Specifically, body roll, tire and drive-train dynamics, ti re force saturation, and tire side force lag are shown to be important effects to include in models for emergency maneuvers. Current control lers, designed for low-g maneuvers only, neglect these effects. The fo llow on paper demonstrates the performance of lateral controllers duri ng high-g lateral emergency maneuvers using these vehicle models.