Path planning using vehicle slip angle prediction for obstacle avoidance manoeuvres in complex driving scenarios

- When an obstacle suddenly appears in the path of a vehicle a manoeuvre has to be executed to avoid it. In the future, Advanced Driver Assistance Systems will perform this task automatically. However, the plan and execution in real time of an obstacle avoidance manoeuvre is challenging because it has to not only avoid the obstacles but also fulfil additional requirements such as to remain within the road boundaries, satisfy acceleration and jerk limits, avoid excessive vehicle slip angles and respect actuators’ limitations. Most of the approaches proposed up to now relax the problem by considering only simple driving scenarios, such as lane change manoeuvres, and thus can’t handle complex driving situations. Furthermore, no consideration of the vehicle’s slip angle is being taken leading to paths that either cause instability or limit conservatively the maximum yaw rate. In this paper, for the first time, an obstacle avoidance manoeuvre planning method that includes a prediction of the vehicle’s slip angle is proposed. The methodology which is based on a finite element method can handle complex driving scenarios and enables the planning of paths that respect vehicle dynamics’ limitations. Numerical simulations using a linear bicycle model show the performance of the proposed method and its advantages compared to standard path planning methods