Lane-keeping assistance control algorithm using differential braking to prevent unintended lane departures

This paper describes a hierarchical lane keeping assistance control algorithm for a vehicle. The proposed control strategy consists of a supervisor, an upper-level controller and a lower-level controller. The supervisor determines whether lane departure is intended or not, and whether the proposed algorithm is activated or not. To detect driver's lane change intention, the steering behavior index has been developed incorporating vehicle speed and road curvature. To validate the detection performance on the lane change intention, full-scale simulator tests on a virtual test track (VTT) are conducted under various driving situations. The upper-level controller is designed to compute the desired yaw rate for the lane departure prevention, and for the guidance with ride comfort. The lower-level controller is designed to compute the desired yaw moment in order to track the desired yaw rate, and to distribute it into each tire's braking force in order to track the desired yaw moment. The control allocation method is adopted to distribute braking forces under the actuator's control input limitation. The proposed lane keeping assistance control algorithm is evaluated with human driver model-in-the-loop simulation and experiments on a real vehicle. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.