Integrated Longitudinal and Lateral Control System Design and Case Study on an Electric Vehicle

Abstract

This paper presents the design of an integrated longitudinal and lateral controller for autonomous vehicle and field tests with an electric vehicle. First, the longitudinal design was studied which includes the spacing policy as the upper level controller and throttle and brake control as the lower level controller. A safety spacing policy was proposed considering both the vehicle states and the vehicle capability. A coordinated throttle and brake controller was also designed to ensure the vehicle pursuing the desired acceleration. Second, a multimodel lateral controller was proposed which can perform the lane tracking and lane changing manoeuvres. Then, an integrated control structure was proposed to manage both the longitudinal and lateral controller. Finally, simulation and visualization works were carried out to validate the proposed solutions. An electric vehicle experiment platform was also built, and field tests showed encouraging results.