Impact of Control System Model Parameters on the Obstacle Avoidance by an Autonomous Car-Trailer Unit: Research Results

Abstract

The introduction of autonomous cars will help to improve road traffic safety, and the use of a cargo trailer improves the energy efficiency of transport. One of the critical (collision) road situations has been considered, where immediate counteraction is required in a space that has been only partly defined. This research work was aimed at determining the impact of the trajectory planning method and the values of some parameters of the control system on the feasibility of safe avoidance of an obstacle that has suddenly appeared. The obstacle is assumed to be a motor vehicle moving on a road intersection along a collision path in relation to the autonomous car-trailer unit (CT unit) travelling at high speed. Analysis of cooperation between several non-linear models (representing the car, trailer, tyre–road interaction, and driving controller) has been carried out. Mathematical models of the control system and the CT unit have been built. The process of selection of temporary and variable parameters, applied to the control system for the time of the critical situation under consideration, has been shown. The research work carried out has made it possible to recommend appropriate parameter values for the control system.

The bicycle model of a 4WS car lateral dynamics for lane change controller

“…The analysis of the 4WS bicycle model will be based on the research of the 4WS vehicle lane change process through a suddenly appearing obstacle [13] and [14]. The driver or controller during this manoeuvre generates a "bang-bang" signal (a jerk of the steering wheel, a hold, a jerk in the other direction, a hold and a return to the zero position) (Figure 3).…”

Vehicle and Traffic Safety

“…In total, 115 authors contributed to the preparation of these 29 publications. The authors were mainly affiliated to universities (there were 31 such units among the affiliations), research institutes (8), and enterprises (2).…”

“…Some articles directly related to vehicle safety in the field of car passive safety [1,14], active vehicle safety [7,11,12,20,26], or comfort [25]. Several papers were devoted to issues related to the operation and safety of electric vehicles [10,19,29] and autonomous vehicles [2,8,9,13,16,18]. Several studies referred to selected problems in the reconstruction of road accidents [5,22,28].…”

Determining the trajectory of the vehicle motion on the basis of the recorded physical quantities describing its dynamics during double lane change maneuvers

“…Obtaining data on physical quantities describing the movement of vehicles is of interest to many research entities: passive safety systems [4,7], active safety systems e.g. during the modeling of autonomous lane change algorithms [8,9], compliance of technological solutions with applicable normative documents, e.g. LDWS (Lane Departure Warning System) or experts analyzing the records of UDS (Unfall Daten Speicher) or ADR (Accident Data Recorder) black boxes [2] or during modelling vehicle dynamics [5].…”