This paper looks into recent developments and research trends in collision avoidance/warning systems and automation of vehicle longitudinal/lateral control tasks. It is an attempt to provide a bigger picture of the very diverse, detailed and highly multidisciplinary research in this area. Based on diversely selected research, this paper explains the initiatives for automation in different levels of transportation system with a specific emphasis on the vehicle-level automation. Human factor studies and legal issues are analyzed as well as control algorithms. Drivers' comfort and well being, increased safety, and increased highway capacity are among the most important initiatives counted for automation. However, sometimes these are contradictory requirements. Relying on an analytical survey of the published research, we will try to provide a more clear understanding of the impact of automation/warning systems on each of the above-mentioned factors. The discussion of sensory issues requires a dedicated paper due to its broad range and is not addressed in this paper.

Research advances in intelligent collision avoidance and adaptive cruise control

Good estimates of vehicle mass and road grade are important in automation of heavy duty vehicles, vehicle following manoeuvres or traditional powertrain control schemes. Recursive least square (RLS) with multiple forgetting factors accounts for different rates of change for different parameters and thus, enables simultaneous estimation of the time-varying grade and the piece-wise constant mass. An ad hoc modification of the update law for the gain in the RLS scheme is proposed and used in simulation and experiments. We demonstrate that the proposed scheme estimates mass within 5% of its actual value and tracks grade with good accuracy provided that inputs are persistently exciting. The experimental setups, signals, their source and their accuracy are discussed. Issues like lack of persistent excitations in certain parts of the run or difficulties of parameter tracking during gear shift are explained and suggestions to bypass these problems are made.

/pdf/recursive-least-squares-with-forgetting-for-online-469zzljz1x.pdf

Recursive least squares with forgetting for online estimation of vehicle mass and road grade: theory and experiments

String stability for vehicular platoon control: Definitions and analysis methods

Advanced Driver Assistance Systems from Autonomous to Cooperative Approach

http://www.dct.tue.nl/New/Heemels/NauPlo_CEP_10.pdf

Design and implementation of parameterized adaptive cruise control : an explicit model predictive control approach

This report describes the results of experimental evaluation of longitudinal control algorithms for commercial heavy vehicles (CHVs). Given the problem of delays in the fuel and brake actuators of automated CHVs, the researchers present improved modeling of air brakes for CHVs, and novel nonlinear algorithms for the longitudinal control of CHVs without intervehicle communication. The significance of these results in terms of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) deployment is that one of the major obstacles to autonomous vehicle following for CHVs has now been removed The authors also point out that adaptive cruise control can now be implemented in CHVs that are not equipped with Electronic Brake Systems.

/pdf/longitudinal-control-of-heavy-duty-vehicles-experimental-i2y97x9z0r.pdf

Longitudinal Control Of Heavy Duty Vehicles: Experimental Evaluation

String stability properties of ahs longitudinal vehicle controllers

This report focuses on the design of longitudinal control algorithms for commercial heavy vehicles (CHVs). The algorithms use nonlinear spacing policies, backstepping control design, and aggressive prediction schemes to deal with the presence of significant delays and saturations in the fuel and brake actuators. The algorithms can also deal with delays both in the presence and in the absence of intervehicle communication. A by-product on this research is the development of two software packages, Platoon-Builder and TruckVis, for simulation and animation of CHV platoons. Additionally, another important result of this project is a new simplified framework for evaluating the longitudinal string stability properties of platoons of automated vehicles.

/pdf/analysis-design-and-evaluation-of-avcs-for-heavy-duty-292bqvvzje.pdf

Jennifer Eyre

Papers

Longitudinal Control Of Heavy Duty Vehicles: Experimental Evaluation

String stability properties of ahs longitudinal vehicle controllers

Analysis, Design, And Evaluation Of Avcs For Heavy-duty Vehicles With Actuator Delays

Analysis, Design, And Evaluation Of Avcs For Heavy-duty Vehicles With Actuator Delays