Heading Control System for a Multi-body Vehicle with a Virtual Test Driver

This paper includes a Heading Control (HC) system for a multi-body vehicle. HC system helps reducing the required torque from the driver and improves the lane keeping efficiency. HC system is important for safety and driver comfort in traffic. The controller performance is examined on a virtual test drive platform. The optimal control theory is applied to HC system and examined on a curved path and under a side wind disturbance. Different assistance levels are applied to see the characteristics of the controller with different virtual test drivers. The results are analyzed based on three performance indices; lane keeping performance (LKP) index, assist torque performance (ATP) index and driver torque performance (DTP) index. As seen from the results while using HC system the lateral displacement decreases as the lane keeping performance increases and the driver torque performance decreases as the assist torque performance increases.