Temporal analysis of the gate concept as enabler for highly automated driving based on the Conduct-by-Wire approach

Conduct-by-Wire (CbW) is an innovative vehicle guidance concept that shifts the vehicle control task from the stabilization level to the guidance level. Instead of continuous stabilization on a designated trajectory - using the conventional control elements for manual steering, braking and accelerating - a CbW vehicle is controlled by means of maneuver commands. One important element on the way to realizing CbW might be the gate concept that consists in a segmentation of the vehicle guidance task and the identification of decision points during the execution of a driver´s maneuver command. This article introduces an approach for the analysis of the time available for decision-making in systematically derived scenarios. For the first time, the results offer the basis for a suitability evaluation of the gate concept and thus a fundamental contribution to the technical feasibility assessment of CbW.