Longitudinal and lateral control for automated lane change maneuvers

This paper considers the trajectory planning problem of a vehicle system for automated lane change maneuvers. By considering a lane change maneuver as primarily a longitudinal planning problem, the proposed trajectory planning algorithm determines whether there exists a longitudinal trajectory which allows the ego vehicle to safely position itself in a gap between surrounding vehicles in the target lane. If such a longitudinal trajectory exists, the algorithm plans the corresponding lateral trajectory. The lane change trajectory planning problem is thereby reduced to solving low-complexity model predictive control problems resulting in loosely coupled longitudinal and lateral motion trajectories. Simulation results demonstrate the ability of the proposed algorithm to generate smooth collision-free trajectories for lane change maneuvers.