Safety, comfort, and optimal tracking control in AHS applications

We propose a self-contained intelligent vehicle controller, called the autonomous vehicle driving system (AVDS), for automatic vehicle driving on a limited-access highway. AVDS is a two-level structure: the top decision level analyzes the traffic situation and determines a driving mode among several basic driving modes, while the bottom level computes the real-time control signal based on the chosen driving mode. An interface is introduced as a way of coupling decision and control levels. The bottom level uses predictive control to optimize the control objective provided by the top level, while considering passenger comfort and safety. In this way, the controller at the bottom level has the same structure across different driving modes. In addition, the proposed system is modular and extensible in the sense that it can accommodate each step in the evolutionary deployment by easily adding new rules into the decision, and incorporating additional real time information into the control