A new approach to the design of coordinated road departure avoidance systems

In this article, a multi-input multi-output (MIMO) robust road departure avoidance system based on a closed-loop driver decision estimator (DDE) is presented. The main idea is that of incorporating the driver intent in the control of the vehicle. The driver decision estimator computes the vehicle look ahead lateral position based on driver input and uses this position to establish the risk of road departure. The MIMO controller uses the vehicle lateral position at the look ahead distance and yaw rate to calculate both the front steering angle and differential braking as the control efforts. The DDE ensures that the vehicle remains within the road borders without altering the vehicle response when the driver steers the vehicle back. It is shown that the use of both active steering and differential braking can stabilize the vehicle with shorter look ahead distances compared to the use of only steering. Numerical simulations show the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed approach in comparison with the generalization of other available methods