Proactive Approach to Safe Automated Driving: Control of Evasive Maneuvers in Hazardous Scenarios

Emergency maneuvers on highways present one of the most complex challenges for automated driving. High speeds pushing the vehicle towards nonlinear regimes, coupled with the necessity of swift decision making, complicates the collision avoidance problem to the extent that even expert human drivers may struggle to safely avoid collisions.
Lack of sufficient and reliable data limits applicability of model-free and data-driven control approaches in hazardous scenarios, opening the door to model-based and optimization based control approaches. However, the unknown behavior of other road users, the sensitivity of the handling limits (e.g., tire saturation) to road conditions, and the amplification of minor steering adjustments on the lateral trajectory due to high speed necessitate the incorporation of nonlinear models in the design. Such nonlinearities should be balanced with the increased complexity and the need for swift responses to hazard....