An adaptive finite element method for computing emergency manoeuvres of ground vehicles in complex driving scenarios

In emergency cases a vehicle has to avoid colliding with one or more obstacles, stay within road boundaries, satisfy acceleration and jerk limits, fulfil stability requirements and respect vehicle system dynamics limitations. The real time solution of such a problem is difficult and as a result various approaches, which usually relax the problem, have been proposed until now. In this study, a new method for computing emergency paths for complex driving scenarios is presented. The method which is based on the finite element concept formulates the dynamic optimisation problem as a linear algebraic one. An empirical formula adapts the size of the finite elements to optimise the dynamics of the emergency path. The proposed approach is evaluated in Matlab and Carsim simulation environments for different driving scenarios. The results show that with the proposed approach complex emergency manoeuvres are planned with improved performance compared to other known methods.