Analysis of Autonomous Emergency Steering System Using Lateral Skyhook Based Estimated Lateral Force Feedback in IPG Carmaker

Collision avoidance is one of the important safety systems for automated vehicle to avoid potential collision due to frontal collision or rear-end collision. One of the main systems used in automated vehicles are the autonomous emergency braking (AEB) system to halt the vehicle from rear end collision. However, during high-speed driving and low time-to-collision (TTC) conditions, capability of AEB for halting vehicle from motion is affected. This increases the probability for the rear end collisions with other traffic vehicle which leads to road accidents. Therefore, an active safety system namely autonomous emergency steering (AES) control using estimated lateral force feedback (EsLaF) system was developed and implemented in this study along with AEB for collision avoidance application. The proposed estimated lateral force feedback (EsLaF) system is designed based on the imaginary lateral skyhook damper mounted at both longitudinal position of vehicle. The fictitious lateral skyhook generates the lateral forces for the vehicle to perform lane changing profile once the TTC is low and the vehicle is at high-speed driving condition. The automated vehicle equipped with AES with EsLaF is tested at maximum speed of 60 km/h. The ego-vehicle results such as yaw rate, lateral acceleration and lateral displacement is analysed in this study. The performance of AES with EsLAF is evaluated where the proposed system is only activated during high speed conditions and low TTC with minimum lateral distance between CoG of traffic object and ego-vehicle is less than 2 meter and during high TTC, the ego-vehicle used AEB to halt the vehicle without steering intervention with longitudinal distance of less than 2 meter. Thus, it can be noted that the AES with EsLaF is able to overtake the traffic objects in longitudinal direction using steering input at critical driving conditions and maintain the usage of AEB for less critical driving condition to avoid instability condition for the ego-vehicle.