Active accident avoidance case study: Integrating drowsiness monitoring system with lateral control and speed regulation in passenger vehicles

This study proposes architecture for integrating intelligent control systems into vehicles, with special consideration to include the human-driver in the control loop. As a case study of the proposed architecture, drowsiness monitoring system is combined with an adaptive and robust lateral controller. Drowsiness is considered to be related to the uncertainty in steering wheel commands for the vehicle lateral movement. Using a robust control theory scheme, the uncertainties from road-vehicle forces and driver inputs are addressed resulting in a lateral controller. The controller is able to re-shape the frequency response of the vehicle in both lateral acceleration and side-slip angle, shifting the response into more stable areas in Nyquist diagram. An additional speed reduction finalizes the complete stabilization of the vehicle-driver system. The stabilization in lateral dynamics of the car and speed reduction addresses the characteristics of the road accident patterns including drowsy/sleepy drivers.