Advanced Vehicle Control with an Optimized Speed Profile using Road Characteristics for Road Departure Prevention

Many passenger vehicles are equipped with automatic safety features. One system, Electronic Stability Control (ESC), saved 7,024 lives from 2011 to 2015. While effective, ESC and other similar control systems are reactionary in nature and require knowledge of a vehicle's current state to determine the response at the next state. Also, many control systems do not take the road characteristics into account, despite being an important contributor to a vehicle's dynamics. This work presents a predictive vehicle controller to help prevent roadside departures during cornering that incorporates the road's geometry and roughness to estimate the vehicle's safe operating speed. An Optimized Speed Profile generates a speed trajectory to allow the vehicle to successfully navigate the corner while preserving ride quality. Simulation results demonstrate cases in which vehicles equipped with ESC would depart from the road while the proposed system does not. Simulations demonstrate that road roughness effects account for up to 10% of the velocity changes in the maximum allowable cornering speed; simulations based on a real-world highway off-ramp measurement demonstrate that the proposed control system is capable of lane-keeping while maintaining stability.