In recent years, road vehicle automation has become an important and popular topic for research and development in both academic and industrial spheres. New developments have received extensive coverage in the popular press, and it may be said that the topic has captured the public imagination. Indeed, the topic has generated interest across a wide range of academic, industry and governmental communities, well beyond vehicle engineering; these include computer science, transportation, urban planning, legal, social science and psychology. While this follows a similar surge of interest – and subsequent hiatus – of Automated Highway Systems in the 1990s, the current level of interest is substantially greater, and current expectations are high. It is common to frame the new technologies under the banner of ‘self-driving cars’ – robotic systems potentially taking over the entire role of the human driver, a capability that does not fully exist at present. However, this single vision leads one to ignore the existing range of automated systems that are both feasible and useful. Recent developments are underpinned by substantial and long-term trends in ‘computerisation’ of the automobile, with developments in sensors, actuators and control technologies to spur the new developments in both industry and academia. In this paper, we review the evolution of the intelligent vehicle and the supporting technologies with a focus on the progress and key challenges for vehicle system dynamics. A number of relevant themes around driving automation are explored in this article, with special focus on those most relevant to the underlying vehicle system dynamics. One conclusion is that increased precision is needed in sensing and controlling vehicle motions, a trend that can mimic that of the aerospace industry, and similarly benefit from increased use of redundant by-wire actuators.

A generic controller for improving the lateral performance of heavy vehicle combinations by steering the axles of the towed units is proposed. The lateral performance of nine heavy vehicle combinations, including conventional combinations and existing and prospective longer combinations, are studied with and without the controller. The performance of the passive vehicles clearly indicates a need for improvements, which can be achieved by the proposed controller. The results obtained for controller verification in the frequency and time domains demonstrate that the controller reduces the yaw rate rearward amplification and off-tracking of all studied vehicles significantly, and diminishes trailer swings without reducing manoeuvrability. Furthermore, as a by-product, it moderately reduces the lateral acceleration rearward amplification. The improvements obtained by the proposed controller can promote the use of longer combination vehicles in traffic, which will result in a reduction of congestion, as well as substantial environmental and economic benefits.

The decreasing cost of radar and camera sensory technology has established advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) to the standard equipment of modern vehicles. ADAS employ semi-autonomous interventions in longitudinal (e.g., adaptive cruise control, ACC) and lateral (e.g., lane-keeping aid, LKA) direction. ACC and LKA constitute the milestones of ADAS technology and have shown to correspondingly reduce driving effort and unintended lane-drifts. ADAS and driver share the vehicle control; this in-turn creates a nonfinite number of test cases that have to be tested-verified so-as to enable safe software (SW) release. Adjacent to ADAS, vehicle dynamics-related systems, such as the antilock braking system and the dynamic-stability and traction control, have also to undergo through an exhaustive SW verification. Distilling the previous statements, this paper cultivates the concept of virtual SW verification by evaluating Volvo's production and a concept driver steering override (DSO) for LKA systems. The DSO concept addresses the driver's interaction with the LKA system and adapts the intervention level. The driver's activation is quantified though the steering torque and road/vehicle information. Two different test-runs per DSO strategy are presented and the real-car (physical) testing results are reproduced in simulation. Both the real and postprocessed simulation results show: 1) the importance of the override strategy on the LKA benefits; and 2) the importance of computer-aided engineering for studying/designing ADAS.

This paper considers the problem of collision avoidance for road vehicles, operating at the limits of friction. A two-level modelling and control methodology is proposed, with the upper level using a friction-limited particle model for motion planning, and the lower level using a nonlinear 3DOF model for optimal control allocation. Motion planning adopts a two-phase approach: the first phase is to avoid the obstacle, the second is to recover lane keeping with minimal additional lateral deviation. This methodology differs from the more standard approach of path-planning/path-following, as there is no explicit path reference used; the control reference is a target acceleration vector which simultaneously induces changes in direction and speed. The lower level control distributes vehicle targets to the brake and steer actuators via a new and efficient method, the Modified Hamiltonian Algorithm (MHA). MHA balances CG acceleration targets with yaw moment tracking to preserve lateral stability. A nonlinear 7DOF two-track vehicle model confirms the overall validity of this novel methodology for collision avoidance.

A steering-based controller for improving lateral performance of longer combination vehicles (LCVs) is proposed. The controller steers the axles of the towed units to regulate the time span between the driver steering and generation of tyre lateral forces at the towed units and consequently reduces the yaw rate rearward amplification (RWA) and offtracking. The open-loop effectiveness of the controller is evaluated with simulations and its closed loop or driver in the loop effectiveness is verified on a test track with a truck–dolly–semitrailer test vehicle in a series of single- and double-lane change manoeuvres. The developed controller reduces the yaw rate RWA and offtracking considerably without diminishing the manoeuvrability. Furthermore, as a byproduct, it decreases the lateral acceleration RWA moderately. The obtained safety improvements by the proposed controller can promote the use of LCVs in traffic which will result in the reduction of congestion problem as well as environmental and economic benefits.