Autonomous Vehicle Emergency Obstacle Avoidance Maneuver Framework at Highway Speeds

Abstract

An autonomous vehicle (AV) uses high-level decision making and lower-level actuator controls, such as throttle (acceleration), braking (deceleration), and steering (change in lateral direction) to navigate through various types of road networks. Path planning and path following for highway driving are currently available in series-produced highly automated vehicles. In addition to these, emergency collision avoidance decision making and maneuvering are another key and essential feature that is needed in a series production AV at highway driving speeds. For reliability, low cost, and fast computation, such an emergency obstacle avoidance maneuvering system should use well-established conventional methods as opposed to data-driven neural networks or reinforcement learning methods, which are currently not suitable for use in highway AV driving. This paper presents a novel Emergency Obstacle Avoidance Maneuver (EOAM) methodology for AVs traveling at higher speeds and lower road surface friction, involving time-critical maneuver determination and control. The proposed EOAM framework offers usage of the AV’s sensing, perception, control, and actuation system abilities as one cohesive system to avoid an on-road obstacle, based first on performance feasibility and second on passenger comfort, and it is designed to be well integrated within an AV’s high-level control and decision-making system. To demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed method, co-simulation including the AV’s EOAM logic in Simulink and a vehicle model in CarSim is conducted with speeds ranging from 55 to 165 km/h and on road surfaces with friction ranging from 1.0 to 0.1. The results are analyzed and interpreted in the context of an entire AV system, with implications for future work.