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Design of Autonomous Emergency Braking System Based on 2016-01-1453

Impedance Control for 3-Car Driving Scenario Published 04/05/2016

I-Hsuan Lee and Bi-Cheng Luan

Haitec

CITATION: Lee, I. and Luan, B., "Design of Autonomous Emergency Braking System Based on Impedance Control for 3-Car Driving
Scenario," SAE Technical Paper 2016-01-1453, 2016, doi:10.4271/2016-01-1453.

Copyright © 2016 SAE International

Abstract One typical AEB activation scenario is the host vehicle automatically
brakes in time and avoids colliding with the preceding vehicle that
Autonomous emergency braking (AEB) systems is one of the
exhibits a sudden deceleration. However, when multiple vehicles are
functions of the Advanced Driver Assists System to avoid or mitigate
traveling in series, the host vehicle could brake too fast for the
vehicle frontal collisions. Most of the previous studies focus on
following vehicles to react. The following vehicle would then crash
two-car scenario where the host vehicle monitors the distances to the
into the host vehicle, causing damages or injuring passengers in the
vehicles in front, and automatically applies emergency brake when a
host vehicle. In spite of having the high rate of occurrence in real
collision is imminent. The purpose of this paper is to develop an
world, especially on highways [1], few researches concentrate on the
Advanced-AEB control system that mitigates collisions in a multi-car
subject of AEB system that prevents collisions with both preceding
scenario by measuring the distances to the vehicles in front as well as
and following vehicles. X.Y. Lu & J.Q. Wang [8] proposes a control
those to the vehicles behind using the concept of impedance control.
strategy for multiple-vehicle longitudinal collision avoidance by
A simple gain-scheduling PI controller was designed for the host
incorporating vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications with
vehicle to track the reference inputs generated by the impedance
automated brake control capabilities. Ashrafi et al. [9] used Monte
control. The preliminary simulation results demonstrate that the
Carlo simulation to inspect inter-vehicular factors influencing chain
proposed AEB is effective in mitigating the collisions in a 3-car
collisions in vehicular networks. They claimed that the severity of
following scenario.
accidents would be reduced significantly by only 50% V2V
communication penetration.
Introduction
In this paper, we investigate a control strategy for a new AEB system
Traffic accidents have become a major social problem. According to
based on the driving scenario of both preceding and following
the 2011 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)
vehicles. While the conventional AEB help the host vehicle to avoid
crash database, there were around 5.3 million police reported crashes
hitting the preceding vehicle, it might also create a collision with the
[1] in the US. Statistics show that collisions with motor vehicles
following vehicle. In order to avoid or mitigate the impact of multiple
create the most serious damage, where the rear-end collisions consist
vehicle collisions, this paper proposes to employ impedance control
of 32.2% among all of the life threatening incidents. In addition to the
as a reference model for the AEB control system. Based on the
loss of lives, these incidents cause economic losses in terms of
concept of sprung-mass system, the host vehicle will act as a virtual
property damages and lost productivities.
bumper between the front and the rear vehicles. The controller will
adjust the host vehicle so that proper relative movements can be
Autonomous emergency braking (AEB) system has become one of
performed. As a result, the host vehicle can adjust its dynamics more
the main active safety research topics in the field of Advanced Driver
intelligently to avoid the collision from both front and rear ends.
Assist System (ADAS) [2, 3, 4]. The development of such systems is
also increasingly focused by the automakers, such as Volvo,
The paper is organized as follows: Section II reviews the
Mercedes, Audi, Lexus, etc. [5, 6]. The main purpose of the AEB
conventional autonomous emergency control systems; Section III
system is to help the drivers to avoid collisions. When the sensors of
presents the analysis of the proposed autonomous emergency braking
the host vehicle detect a frontal obstacle with a significant risk of
system and the design of the control algorithm using impedance
collision, the AEB system is then activated to avoid such a collision,
control; Section IV shows the simulation setup, results, and analysis;
or to reduce the impact speed. [7]. In other words, AEB systems are
Section V is the concluding remarks.
designed to automatically activate to avoid or mitigate rear-end
collisions.
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Conventional Autonomous Emergency Braking
Figure 1. Conventional 2-Car Driving Scenario for AEB System
Consider the scenario where a vehicle is closing in to a braking
vehicle, or a stationary obstacle, one simple indicator to calculate the
collision risk (which is also the potential to activate the AEB system)
is the temporal proximity between the vehicles, which is so called
Time-To-Collision (TTC).
Fig. 1 shows the conventional driving scenario for an AEB system,
where Car 2 is the host vehicle. Two vehicles are traveling in the
same direction (from right to left), where x1 and x2 represent the
current position of Car 1 (preceding vehicle) and Car 2 (host vehicle),
respectively, and xa (=x1-x2) represents the relative distance between
Car 2 and Car 1. The TTC of the host vehicle (Car 2) can be
expressed as:
(1)
where xa, va, aa are the relative position, relative velocity and relative
acceleration, respectively [2]. The time to collision at which braking
has to be commenced is:
(2)
where xa,brake is the distance that Car 2 will travel during the braking
maneuver, which can be expressed as:
(3)
(4)
Note that tbrake is the necessary braking time for collision avoidance,
and a2 is the acceleration of Car 2. Once it comes to tcollision < ttcbrake,
the braking system of Car 2 will be activated to avoid the collision
(or mitigate the damage). By adjusting the TTC to proper values
according to the current vehicle velocity, the conventional AEB
system of Car 2 (the host vehicle) has been designed.
3-Car Scenario Control Algorithm Design
By considering the preceding (Car 1), host (Car 2), and following
(Car 3) vehicles in the same collision avoidance scenario, we
formulate the advanced autonomous emergency braking system as
the impedance control problem. A complete control scheme of this
advanced AEB control system (for Car 2), including the impedance
reference model, is shown in Fig. 2.
The basic concept is to consider Car 2 as a mass in between two
moving objects. The goal for the controller of Car 2 is to track the
reference trajectory xa_ref, which is the desired distance to Car 1 and is
generated by using Car 3 as an external force. By maintaining the
stability of the closed-loop system within the system limitations (e.g.,
brake capabilities), the braking behavior of Car 2 can act as a virtual
bumper between the front and rear vehicles to avoid or mitigate
collisions.
Figure 2. Block Diagram of Advanced Autonomous Emergency Braking
Control System
Impedance Control-Reference Model
Impedance control has been used for controlling the dynamics of
prosthetic devices and robot arms for quite some time, and the
concept was first introduced by Hogan in 1985 [10]. Normally it
imposes a desired dynamic behavior of the interaction between robot
end-effector and the environment. More recently, it has also been
applied to collision avoidance systems [11, 12].
In this paper, impedance control is utilized as the reference model as
shown in Fig. 3. Three vehicles are traveling in the same direction
from right to left, where x1, x2 and x3 represent the current positions
of Car 1, Car 2 and Car 3, respectively. The host vehicle (Car 2)
should brake sufficiently hard to avoid hitting the preceding vehicle
(Car 1) when it decelerates sharply. However, in the cases when the
following vehicle (Car 3) either does not brake hard enough or does
not apply brake in time, Car 3 can crash into the host vehicle. In order
to prevent or mitigate the damage of such a crash, impedance control
is applied to the control system as an external reference braking force
of Car 2. By properly selecting the spring and damper coefficients,
the impedance controller will perform as a virtual bumper to keep
Car 2 away from the preceding and following vehicles. As shown in
Fig, 3, k1 and k2 are the coefficients of springs, and b1 and b2 are
coefficients for dampers.
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Figure 3. Multiple vehicles system based on impedance controller as a virtual
bumper
Let xa_ref and xb_ref be the ideal relative position between Car 2 and
Car 1 as well as Car 3 and Car 2, respectively. We can thus describe
the reference model as the following equation:
(5)
(6)
(7)
where xb = x3 - x2 is the relative position between Car 2 and Car 3,
xa_def and xb_def are the deformation amounts of sprung-mass system,
lsafe_a and lsafe_b are the distance of safe space between vehicles in
traffic, m2 is the mass of Car 2, and k1, k2, b1 and b2 are the same
coefficients which has been described in Fig. 3. Note that lsafe_a and
lsafe_b should be functions of v2 and v3, respectively. When Car 1 is
stopped, the left side of Eq.(5) is the dynamic equation of motion of
Car 2. Thus the right side of Eq.(5) can be viewed as dominated by
the dynamics of Car 3, which can be considered as the external force
Fb applying to the Car 2 system, and can be expressed as following:
(8)
By substituting equation (8) into equation (5), the transfer function of
reference model can be expressed as following:
(9)
To further demonstrate the feasibility of the impendence control in
the 3-car collision avoidance, the “stopped car” scenario (the standard
AEB interurban frontal collision scenario) will be discussed in next
section. Since that the stopped Car 1 after braking can be considered
as a static obstacle, the structure of the reference model can be
simplified from Fig. 3 into Fig. 4.
Figure 4. Simplified Concept of the Reference Model into a Sprung-Mass
System
PI Gain-Scheduling Control
In order to further demonstrate the applicability of the proposed
impedance AEB control in the real world, a conventional PI
(Proportional-Integral) control with gain scheduling is adopted in Car
2 so that xa can track xa_ref. A gain-scheduled controller is a controller
whose gains are automatically adjusted as a function of time,
operating condition, or plant parameters. Gain scheduling is a
common strategy for controlling systems whose dynamics change
with time or operating condition. Gain scheduling enhances PI
control where gains and time constants vary according to the current
value of the process variables. By scheduling the control gains on a
reference trajectory, it has been proven as a successful, stable and
robust design methodology in many engineering applications with
nonlinear plants [13].
The controlling objective here is to follow the trajectory provided by
the impedance reference model in equation (9). The conventional PI
controller can be defined as the follows:
(10)
where e is the error between reference relative position xa_ref and the
actual relative position xa , u is the braking force of Car 2. To track
the nonlinear reference trajectory, the PI gain-scheduling control is
then designed by selecting operating points based on the error
trajectory. By constructing a linear compensator for each of these
operating points, the gains of the compensators are then scheduled
and resulting in a global compensator.
Simulation
The proposed approach is evaluated under many different driving
scenarios and road frictions using CarSim [14] in Matlab/Simulink.
CarSim (see figure 5) is a software program developed by the
Mechanical Simulation Corporation to simulate and analyze vehicle
dynamic responses. The E-class seden model is selected to verify the
proposed control in this paper. This model has front independent
suspensions, rear solid axles, 14 multi-body degrees of freedom, and
54 state variables.
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Figure 5. Graphical User Interface of CarSim
The simulation presented in this paper represents a typical 3-car
collision scenario. Three vehicles were driven along the same lane as
shown in figure 3. The leading vehicle brakes suddenly in front of the
host vehicle, and the one following the host brakes slowly and softly.
The simulation results of the host vehicle (Car 2) with the Advanced-
AEB system will be compared with those from the conventional AEB
to show the effectiveness of the proposed system.
Test Scenario Setup
The simulation is executed by CarSim and Simulink. The vehicle
dynamics model is provided in CarSim. The control models are built
in Simulink. The setting of Car 1 and Car 3 in CarSim are B-class
sports cars with lengths of 4.7 m and weights of 1020 kg. On the
other hand, Car 2 is E-class sedan with a length of 5.696 m and a
weight of 1653 kg. With two cameras on Car 2, which are equipped
at 2.646 m and 1.5 m from each front and rear bumpers, the system is
able to measure the relative distances and relative velocities of Car 1
& 2 and Car 2 & 3.
In the test scenario, each car is separated by 30 m, and is driven with
the initial velocity of 50 km/hr. Car 1 begins braking at 6.25 seconds
after starting with full braking force. While the relative distance xa
and velocity va change with time, once the TTC tcollision is smaller than
the TTC threshold (ttcbrake = 0.311 sec), the Advanced-AEB system
will be triggered, so that Car 2 will begin to brake. Car 3 would start
braking with a small braking pressure of 1.5 MPa 1 seconds later
after noticing the braking maneuver of Car 2. Since that the driver of
Car 3 might want to brake harder while it comes too close to Car 2,
when the relative distance xa is smaller than 1.874 m, the braking
pressure of Car 3 will be increased to the full pressure of 7 MPa, until
the vehicle comes to a full stop.
Driver Model for Car 3
In order to evaluate the multiple car driving scenarios, a GM (General
Model) driver model is employed for rear following car (Car 3). This
GM driver model is widely used for car following evaluation, and
was used to develop adaptive cruise control system. The GM model
is a linear model based on stimulus response concept. Chandler et.al
[15] mentioned that the response of a driver is proportional to the
stimulus he perceives. The relative speed was defined as the only
stimulus. The response of the following driver comes at a time
delayed by the response time Tdriver. The proportionality factor was
called sensitivity factor λ. Thus, the GM model can be expressed as
follows:
(11)
where l and m are termed as sensitivity parameters by setting 2.8 and
0.8, respectively [16]. For the sensitivity factor λ, Chung et al.
proposed a sensitivity factor for deceleration condition, and can be
expressed as follows:
(12)
where a3,max is maximum deceleration of Car 3, tf is the time at which
a driver of rear following vehicle, i.e. Car 3, begins to decelerate. tm
is the time at which a driver can prevent rear end collision only if he/
she decelerates at maximum deceleration rate, and can be expressed
as follows:
(13)
Simulation Results
Based on the testing scenario described above, this section compares
the simulation results on the host vehicle with the conventional AEB
system and those of the Advanced-AEB system. Car 1 starts to brake
at 6.25s, while the host vehicle Car 2 also activates the braking action
after 2 seconds; the Car 3 follows then with a light and slow braking
maneuver. The relative distance between Car 1 and Car 2 is shown in
figure 6. The conventional AEB system and the Advanced-AEB
system both show great performances for rear-end collision
avoidance, where Car 2 stops 3 m and 0.9 m far from Car 1,
respectively. However, figure 7 shows that, with the conventional
AEB system, a crash is happened between Car 2 and Car 3 (-0.3 m
distance) at around 11 sec; on the other hand, with the virtual bumper
in between, the Advanced-AEB system adjusts the braking forces of
Car 2 and successfully avoids the collision.
Figure 6. Relative distance between Car 1 and Car 2 based on conventional
and advanced AEB system
Figure 8 shows the velocity of Car 1, Car 2 and Car 3 with
conventional and advanced AEB system. The host vehicle Car 2 starts
to brake at around 7.9 sec and Car 3 brakes after 1 sec. The
Advanced-AEB system exhibits a better performance where the
velocity of Car 2 has been automatically adjusted when Car 3 is
getting close. Note that for the conventional AEB system, the impact
speed is about 8.4 m/s. The Advanced-AEB also shows the
improvement of comfort in braking action with only -1g deceleration
on the 2 sec as shown in figure 9. Finally, it is easy to observe that the
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conventional AEB braked hard and maintained about the same brake
force (deceleration) until the last moment and thus created higher
collision likelihood by the following vehicle when it had a late
response. However the advanced AEB detected the late response and
thus reduced the brake pressure after the initial hard braking and
modulated the brake pressure (and thus the deceleration) according to
the displacements of both preceding and following vehicles.
Figure 7. Relative distance between Car 2 and Car 3 based on the conventional
and advanced AEB system
Figure 8. Velocity of Car 1, Car 2, Car 3 with conventional and advanced AEB
system
Figure 9. Acceleration of Car 2 with conventional and advanced AEB system
Conclusion
Autonomous emergency braking (AEB) systems is one function of
the Advanced Driver Assists System to avoid rear end collision. Most
of the previous studies were focused on developing an AEB for the
host vehicle under the two-car following scenario. Scenarios with
multiple vehicles traveling in the same direction are still under
investigated. To avoid collision and mitigate damage in the
multivehicle scenario, an advanced-AEB system with impedance
control is proposed in this paper. By using the impedance control as
the reference model, the host vehicle automatically regulates the
braking force by considering the movements of both the preceding
and the following vehicles. If the preceding vehicle brakes abruptly,
the Advanced-AEB system of the host vehicle will first activate the
AEB according to the decreasing TTC. In addition, in order to avoid
the collision from the following vehicle with late or light braking, the
host vehicle tracks the reference braking trajectory using also the
distance to the following vehicle as an additional input. With the
Advanced-AEB system, the safety and comfort of vehicles could be
enhanced. The scenarios with moving preceding vehicle and other
special cases under the standard AEB interurban frontal collision
scenarios will be studies are future work.
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