Stability Control Improvement and State Detection for Autonomous Vehicles

The current work in Phase II focuses on the development of a driver assist and vehicle control system that will drive the vehicle along the safest available path. One such application of driver assistance is automated vehicle convoys. These convoys consist of multiple vehicles and there is a current need to improve the lateral stability of such convoys. In this project, the work done by ASI in the current Phase II project Stability Control Improvement and State Detection for Autonomous Vehicles will be extended to multiple vehicles. This will improve the vehicle localization by using map information from vehicles that have traveled ahead of the following vehicles. Identifiable terrain features will be used as reference points for localization. The sensor data from each vehicle will also be fused to improve the local terrain characterization. The control of the vehicles will also be improved by using high fidelity dynamic models incorporated into the nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC) framework that has been developed in the current Phase II work.