Look-ahead human-machine interface for assistance of manual vehicle steering

During manual steering of a vehicle, the information to the driver is restricted by his perception and recognition. The driver may lose such information under severe weather conditions. Look-ahead information has been shown to have great importance for vehicle steering problems. A supplementary visual display has been developed to provide both the future road information and the future position, of the vehicle based on current vehicle state and steering input for safer driving. A state observer is proposed to estimate the current vehicle state. Both the current steering input and the estimated vehicle state are utilized to predict the future position of the vehicle at a prescribed look-ahead distance. Integration of the vehicle trajectory into the future is avoided by an approximation method, which can be applied in real-time implementation