Emergency maneuvers for AHS vehicles

This paper addresses the issue of emergency maneuvers of intelligent vehicles, treated in the context of time-optimal control. The vehicle is modeled as a planar rear-drive, front steering vehicle, with three degrees-offreedom in the plane, and two control inputs: the steering angle and the rear tractive force. To compute the time optimal trajectories, we first solve the inverse dynamics problem, i.e. compute the nominal (open loop) control inputs that would drive the vehicle along a specified path at given speeds. We then compute the time optimal velocity profile along a given maneuver, assuming free initial and final speeds. This establishes the vehicle's performance limit, which might be used to plan emergency maneuvers. This optimization scheme is demonstrated numerically for a lane change maneuver.