VEHICLE LATERAL CONTROL DEVELOPMENT USING LASER RADAR TO DETECT REFLECTIVE LANE MARKERS

Traffic accidents and congestion are problems which are becoming increasingly severe for automotive traffic and transportation systems. The prevention of severe accidents caused by a driver's inadvertent departure from the traffic lane presents a challenging problem due to the ever growing demands on the current vehicle and highway infrastructure. Inadvertent lane departure can be prevented by automatic lateral control of the vehicle, a component of an Automated Highway System (AHS), As a method of addressing this problem, we are developing a lateral control system which features the use of currently existing infrastructure elements such as reflective lane markers to provide a reference of the roadway ahead. A dynamic vehicle model including the tire characteristics and the steering actuator dynamics was developed to verify the performance of the lateral control algorithm. An important milestone was reached when the system was installed in an automobile and tested in an actual highway environment at typical highway speeds. Testing was conducted in cooperation with the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) on the Interstate 15 High Occupancy Vehicle Express Lane near San Diego, California. This paper reports on our going development efforts to develop the lateral control system, especially the lateral control algorithm and the results from actual highway tests which indicate that a vehicle with a lateral control system can be controlled smoothly using a discrete marker control algorithm.