Shared control for road departure prevention

A driving simulator experiment is presented investigating different road departure prevention (RDP) setups. To induce the risk of road departure, thirty test drivers were asked to avoid a pylon-confined area (obstacle) while keeping the vehicle within the road limits. The RDP system intervened by applying a haptic-feedback (i.e., haptic shared control) and/or correcting the steering angle (i.e., drive-by-wire (DBW) input-mixing shared control) in the event that a vehicle road departure was likely to occur. The system that determines the correcting steering input is a RDP controller based on the driver's inputs. The results showed that DBW effectively helped drivers to stay within road limits and reduced workload. The haptic shared control had a significant influence on the measured steering torque, but limited effect on the steering wheel angle and the vehicle path. The DBW system resulted in drivers making counter-corrections demoting their performance. In conclusion, shared control for RDP is effective, although more research needs to be conducted regarding the human response in situations where the relationship between the steering wheel angle and the front wheels' steering angle is altered while driving.