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As one of the key technologies in autonomous driving, the lateral planning module guides the lateral movement during the driving process. An integrated lateral planning module should consider the non-holonomic constraints of a vehicle, the optimization of the generated trajectory and the applicability to various scenarios. However, the current lateral planning methods can only meet parts of these requirements. In order to satisfy all the performance requirements above, a novel Potential Field (PF) based lateral planning method is proposed in this paper. Firstly, a PF model is built to describe the potential risk of the traffic entities, including the obstacles, road boundaries and lines. The potential fields of these traffic entities are determined by their properties and the traffic regulations. Secondly, the planning algorithm is presented, which comprises three modules: state prediction, state search and trajectory generation.

Lane Keeping Assistance System (LKAS) is a typical lateral driver assistance system with low acceptance. One of the main reasons is that fixed parameters cannot satisfy individual differences. So LKAS adaptive to driver characteristics needs to be designed. Driver Steering Override (DSO) process is an important process of LKAS. It happens when contradiction between driver’s intention and system behavior occurs. As feeling of overriding will affect the overall experience of using LKAS, the design of DSO characteristics is worthy of attention. This research provided an adaptive design scheme aiming at DSO characteristics for LKAS by building Driver Preference Model (DPM) based on simulator test data from preliminary experiments. The DPM was to represent the relationship between driver characteristics indices and driver preferred system characteristics indices. So that new drivers’ preference can be predicted by DPM based on their own daily driving data with LKAS switched off.

The adhesion control is the basic technology of active safety for the four-wheel driven EV. In this paper, a novel adhesion control method based on fuzzy logic control is proposed. The control system can maximize the adhesion force without road condition information and vehicle speed signal. Also, the regulation torque to prevent wheel slip is smooth and the vehicle driving comfort is greatly improved. For implementation, only the rotating speed of the driving wheel and the motor driving torque signals are needed, while the derived information of the wheel acceleration and the skid status are used. The simulation and road test results have shown that the adhesion control method is effective for preventing slip and lock on the slippery road condition.

Electric Power Steering (EPS) is the actuator of several lateral-dynamic-related Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS). A driving simulator with EPS will be much helpful for the ADAS development. However, if a real EPS is used in the driving simulator, it is quite difficult to realize the road reaction force accurately and responsively. To overcome this weakness, a virtual EPS platform is established. The virtual EPS platform contains two parts: one is the vehicle and EPS model, the other is the force feedback actuator (FFA) of the Steer-by-Wire (SBW) system. The FFA is an interface between the driver and the EPS/vehicle model. The reactive torque of the FFA is obtained based on the models. Meanwhile, the input of the EPS model is the steering angle of the FFA. Comparing to a real EPS, the virtual EPS platform has a problem of instability because of the actuator lag of the FFA. Therefore, a damping control method is applied to make the system stable.

In the recent years, the interaction between human driver and Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS) has gradually aroused people’s concern. As a result, the concept of personalized ADAS is being put forward. As an important system of ADAS, Lane Keeping Assistance System (LKAS) also attracts great attention. To achieve personalized LKAS, driver lane keeping characteristic (DLKC) indices which could distinguish different driver lane keeping behavior should be researched. However, there are few researches on DLKC indices for personalized LKAS. Although there are many researches on modeling driver steering behavior, these researches are not sufficient to obtain DLKC indices. One reason is that most of researches are for double lane change behavior which is different from driver lane keeping behavior. The other reason is that the researches on driver lane keeping behavior only provide model structure and rarely discuss identification procedure such as how to select suitable data.

In order to satisfy design requirements of Lane Keeping Assistance System (LKAS), a Driver Steering Override (DSO) strategy is necessary for driver’s interaction with the assistance system. The assistance system can be overridden by the strategy in case of lane change, obstacle avoidance and other emergency situations. However, evaluation and optimization of the DSO strategy for LKAS cannot easily be completed quantitatively considering driver’s acceptability. In this research, firstly subjective and objective evaluation experiment is designed. Secondly, correlations between the subjective and the objective evaluation results are established by using regression analysis. Finally, based on the correlations established previously, the optimal performance of DSO strategy is obtained by setting the desired comprehensive evaluation ratings as the optimized goal.

The accuracy of parking slot detection is a challenge for the safety of the Automated Valet Parking (AVP), while traditional methods of range sensor-based parking slot detection have mostly focused on the detection rate in a scenario, where the ego-vehicle must pass by the slot. This paper uses three-dimensional Light Detection And Ranging (3D LiDAR) to efficiently search parking slots around without passing by them and highlights the accuracy of detecting and tracking. For this purpose, a universal process of 3D LiDAR-based high-accuracy slot perception is proposed in this paper. First, the method Minimum Spanning Tree (MST) is applied to sort obstacles, and Separating Axis Theorem (SAT) are applied to the bounding boxes of obstacles in the bird’s-eye view, to find a free space between two adjacent obstacles. These bounding boxes are obtained by using common point cloud processing methods.

An integrated automatic driving system consists of perception, planning and control. As one of the key components of an autonomous driving system, the longitudinal planning module guides the vehicle to accelerate or decelerate automatically on the roads. A complete longitudinal planning module is supposed to consider the flexibility to various scenarios and multi-objective optimization including safety, comfort and efficiency. However, most of the current longitudinal planning methods can not meet all the requirements above. In order to satisfy the demands mentioned above, a new Potential Field (PF) based longitudinal planning method is presented in this paper. Firstly, a PF model is constructed to depict the potential risk of surrounding traffic entities, including obstacles and roads. The shape of each potential field is closely related to the property of the corresponding traffic entity.

Since situational awareness is crucial for autonomous driving in urban environments, multi-target tracking has become an increasingly popular research topic during the last several years. For autonomous driving in urban environments, cars and pedestrians are the two main types of obstacles, and their motion characteristics are not the same. While in the current related multi-target tracking research, the same motion model (such as Constant Velocity model [CV]) or motion model set (such as CV combined with Constant Acceleration model [CA]) is mostly used to track different types of obstacles simultaneously. Besides, in current research, regular motion models are mostly adopted to track pedestrians, such as CV, CA, and so on, the uncertainty in pedestrian motion is not well considered.

To overcome the shortcomings of subjective evaluation, there have been several studies to examine the correlations between subjective and objective evaluations of on-center steering feel, and some useful results are obtained. However, it is still not clear how to design the steering characteristic based on the correlations. In this paper, we propose a methodology of identifying the optimal on-center steering force characteristic based on the correlations between subjective and objective evaluations. Firstly, significant correlations between subjective and objective evaluations regarding on-center steering feel are established and verified. These verified correlations are then used to design the steering force characteristic. With desired ratings of the subjective evaluation items set as optimization goals, the ideal values of objective evaluation indices are obtained by use of an optimal design method.

This paper presents an integrated modeling approach for real-time discretionary lane-changing decisions by autonomous vehicles, aiming to achieve human-like behavior. The approach incorporates a two-player normal-form game and a novel risk field method. The normal-form game represents the strategic interactions among traffic participants. It captures the trade-offs between lane-changing benefits and risks based on vehicle motion states during a lane change. By continuously determining the Nash equilibrium of the game at each time step, the model decides when it is appropriate to change the lane. A novel risk field method is integrated with the game to model risks in the game pay-offs. The risk field introduces regions along the desired target lane with different time headway ranges and risk weights, capturing traffic participants' complex risk perceptions and considerations in lane-changing scenarios.

Lane Keeping Assistance (LKA) system is a very important part in Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS). It prevents a vehicle from departing out of the lane by exerting intervention. But an inappropriate performance during LKA intervention makes driver feel uncomfortable. The intervention of LKA can be divided into 3 parts: intervention timing, intervention process and intervention ending. Many researches have studied about the intervention timing and ending, but factors during intervention process also affect driver feelings a lot, such as yaw rate and steering wheel velocity. To increase driver’s acceptance of LKA, objective and subjective tests were designed and conducted to explore important indices which are highly correlated with the driver feelings. Different kinds of LKA controller control intervention process in different ways. Therefore, it’s very important to describe the intervention process uniformly and objectively.

The Automatic Parking System (APS) is consisted of environmental perception, path planning and path following. As one of the key technologies in APS, path following module controls the lateral movement of the vehicle during the parking process. A mature path following module should meet all the performance indexes of high precision, fast convergence, convenient tuning and good passenger comfort. However, the current path following control methods can only meet parts of the performance indexes, instead of all. In order to satisfy all the performance indexes above, a path following control method based on Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR) is proposed in this paper. Firstly, the linearization of the non-linear vehicle kinematic model was done to establish a linear system of the path following error. Secondly, LQR optimal control was used to achieve the closed-loop control of this linear system to guarantee its stability and fast convergence property.

Automatic Parking Assist System (APAS) is an important part of Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS). It frees drivers from the burden of maneuvering a vehicle into a narrow parking space. This paper deals with the motion planning, a key issue of APAS, for vehicles in automatic parking. Planning module should guarantee the robustness to various initial postures and ensure that the vehicle is parked symmetrically in the center of the parking slot. However, current planning methods can’t meet both requirements well. To meet the aforementioned requirements, a method combining neural network and Monte-Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) is adopted in this work. From a driver’s perspective, different initial postures imply different parking strategies. In order to achieve the robustness to diverse initial postures, a natural idea is to train a model that can learn various strategies.

Highly accurate parking slot detection methods are crucial for Automated Valet Parking (AVP) systems, to meet their demanding safety and functional requirements. While previous efforts have mostly focused on the algorithms’ capabilities to detect different types of slots under varying conditions, i.e. the detection rate, their accuracy has received little attention at this time. This paper highlights the importance of trustworthy slot detection methods, which address both the detection rate and the detection accuracy. To achieve this goal, an accurate slot detection method and a reliable ground-truth slot measurement method have been proposed in this paper. First, based on a 2D laser range finder, datapoints of obstacle vehicles on both sides of a slot have been collected and preprocessed. Second, the Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise (DBSCAN) algorithm has been improved to efficiently cluster these unevenly-distributed datapoints.