Low Level Control in a Modular System Architecture for Realizing Precise Driving Maneuvers of the Autonomous Vehicle Caroline

Autonomous transportation on public roads has been demonstrated on German Highways since the early nineties. So far, there are few approaches to extend activities to urban scenarios. The 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge afforded the opportunity to demonstrate the abilities of the Technische Universitat Braunschweig to develop the autonomous vehicle Caroline and to show its capabilities in urban like environments. Among 11 teams from the initial 89, team CarOLO mastered the challenges to qualify for the final DARPA Urban Challenge event. This paper describes the overall concept implemented in the field of autonomous vehicle guidance of team CarOLO for the DARPA Urban Challenge 2007. Compared to autonomous driving on highways, an urban environment requires an efficient and flexible interface to realize precise driving maneuvers. The approaches taken to handle complex maneuvers as well as the control structure of the system is shown, which was developed at the Institute of Control Engineering.