IET Intelligent Transport Systems

Research Article

Longitudinal and lateral control of ISSN 1751-956X

Received on 16th December 2019
Revised 23rd March 2020
autonomous vehicles in multi-vehicle driving Accepted on 21st April 2020
E-First on 16th June 2020
environments doi: 10.1049/iet-its.2019.0846
www.ietdl.org

Yulei Wang1, Qian Shao2, Jian Zhou3, Hongyu Zheng3, Hong Chen4
1Department of Control Science and Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, People's Republic of China
2Department of Management Science and Engineering, Business School, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, People's Republic of China
3State Key Laboratory of Automotive Simulation and Control, Jilin University, Changchun 131022, People's Republic of China
4Clean Energy Automotive Engineering Center, Tongji University, Shanghai 201804, People's Republic of China

E-mail: chenhong2019@tongji.edu.cn

Abstract: Lane changes in multi-vehicle driving environments are one of the most challenging manoeuvres for autonomous
vehicles. The key innovation of this study is to develop an integrated longitudinal and lateral trajectory planning and tracking
control algorithm under vehicle-to-vehicle communication. This algorithm includes two levels: trajectory planning and path-
following control. In the upper level, considering riding comfort, a collision-free lane-changing trajectory cluster is generated
under different lane change durations. Then, the most appropriate trajectory from this cluster is provided by selecting the optimal
lane change duration considering vehicle dynamics safety, collision avoidance of surrounding vehicles and driver preference. At
the bottom level, a multiple-input multiple-output triple-step non-linear approach is proposed in the longitudinal and lateral path-
following controller design. The stability of the closed-loop system is rigorously proven based on the Lyapunov function. Finally,
the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is verified with a high-fidelity and full-car model on the veDYNA platform.

1 Introduction Nilsson et al. [17] formulated trajectory planning as the solution of

With the rapid development of automotive engineering, artificial
intelligence and advanced control techniques, autonomous vehicles
(AVs) have recently been studied and are expected to reduce traffic
accidents, traffic jams and driver burden [1–4]. Commercially,
available advanced driver assistance systems [5] have been shown
to improve drivers’ comfort and safety. Given the increased traffic
complexity, the safety of traffic participants and the comfort of
passengers, more effort must be directed at safely and comfortably
covering the trajectory planning and path-following control task
according to the surrounding traffic environment. For instance, an
appropriate lane change should involve longitudinal and lateral
trajectory planning and control subject to vehicle dynamics safety,
collision avoidance of surrounding vehicles and driver preference.
However, the related research is still limited. In the next
subsection, the literature on trajectory planning and integrated
control is reviewed, and then, the original contributions of this
paper are discussed.
1.1 Review and motivations
At the level of trajectory planning, the core task is to plan a
feasible and collision-free trajectory. There is extensive literature
investigating trajectory planning methods, such as potential field
[6, 7], RRT [8, 9], virtual reference tracking [10, 11] and model
predictive control (MPC) [12, 13] methods. Within such methods,
satisfying the constraint of collision avoidance is the priority. In
[14], a hierarchical motion planning framework was proposed,
where the conjugate gradient non-linear optimisation algorithm and
the cubic B-spline curve were employed to smooth and interpolate
the reference path as well as handle both static and moving objects.
The study by Yoneda et al. [15] focused on the trajectory planning
for vehicle manoeuvring in urban traffic scenarios. In response to
static and dynamic obstacles around the vehicle, the trajectory
planning generates lateral and longitudinal profiles for the vehicle
to drive along the given path. For emergency path planning in
active collision avoidance, Cao et al. [16] presented an improved
harmonic velocity potential approach for path planning, which
strongly enhanced the effect of obstacle potentials on a road.
a constrained optimal control problem over a finite time horizon,
where additional constraints were introduced to avoid collisions
with surrounding vehicles.
Recently, the rapid development of vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V)
and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications [18–20] has
brought about the possibility of automatic lane change manoeuvre
sharing based on information from human drivers, vehicles and the
environment. Dixit et al. [21] proposed a combined potential field
and feasible set framework for situational awareness and trajectory
planning for autonomous overtaking. A tube-based robust MPC
was designed to generate a feasible trajectory for longitudinal and
lateral motion of a vehicle. Although the proposed planning
method had been proven to be reliable and robust, trajectory
replanning in multi-vehicle driving environment is not considered.
In another approach [22], a novel framework for vehicle trajectory
replanning was presented to solve a V2V encountering scenario of
lane exchanging with two vehicles, in which both the risk of
collision and the lane-exchanging intentions of the drivers were
considered in the trajectory replanning. Furthermore, Zhang et al.
[23] investigated a non-cooperative V2V trajectory-planning
algorithm considering the characteristics of different drivers. The
non-cooperative problem was formulated as a Nash equilibrium
and solved by a standard non-linear MPC. In a framework
considering V2V and V2I, a lane-changing motion planning model
for AVs was investigated by Zheng et al. [24] to realise trajectory
re-planning in a normal lane-changing process to prevent collisions
in dynamical driving environments. Although the proposed
planning model has the potential to be applied in realistic
environments, complicated non-linear optimisation is intrinsically
difficult to solve, and normally, only a locally optimal solution is
found because the problem is non-convex. In contrast to MPC,
trajectory planning can be alternatively treated as solving
appropriate polynomials. For instance, You et al. [25] adopted
polynomials to describe the trajectory planning issue. Experimental
results demonstrated the effectiveness of the trajectory planning for
autonomous lane change. However, the approach does not involve
the future behaviour of surrounding vehicles and thus cannot apply
to multi-vehicle driving environment. To solve this problem, Zhou
et al. [26] studied a new lane-changing planning strategy whereby

IET Intell. Transp. Syst., 2020, Vol. 14 Iss. 8, pp. 924-935 924
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Fig. 1 Lane change process in the ground coordinate system
the feasible lane-changing trajectories were generated by adding a
tuning factor, and the optimal trajectory was extracted given
comprehensive consideration of collision avoidance, multiple
performance functions and vehicle stability. However, the
trajectory planning strategy in [26] is not flexible enough to be
used in practical applications because the longitudinal velocity is
assumed to be constant. For instance, a structured road normally
has lanes with different speeds. If the vehicle performs an
accelerating lane change from the low-speed lane to the high-speed
lane, the longitudinal trajectory planning cannot be neglected.
Hence, the first motivation of this paper is to develop a single-
tuning factor-based longitudinal and lateral trajectory planning
method for multi-vehicle driving environment.
Coordinated longitudinal and lateral path-following control is
another significant issue associated with AVs in multi-vehicle
driving environments. Vehicle dynamics have strongly non-linear
characteristics and complex properties that make path-following
control difficult and interesting problems. In [27], a non-linear
feedback control was proposed for the non-linear vehicle dynamics
with varying velocity, where the stabilisation of longitudinal,
lateral and yaw angular vehicle velocities was guaranteed
simultaneously. The article [28] investigated coordinated
longitudinal and lateral motion control for AVs. Specifically, a
barrier Lyapunov-based sliding mode control (SMC) was
developed to satisfy error constraints and provide uncertainty
compensation. In [29], a linear feedforward and feedback
controller with string stability was designed to follow the preceding
vehicle, while MPC was applied to regulate the steering angle of
the front wheel for lateral tracking. In addition, an integrated
controller design [30] was carried out based on a seven-degree-of-
freedom vehicle model and the non-linear dynamics of the tire. The
stability of the closed-loop system was proven via control
Lyapunov functions. In [31], the robust overtaking control
framework of autonomous electric ground vehicles was addressed,
in which a robust MPC was designed to attenuate disturbances and
parameter uncertainties. Recently, considering rollover prevention
and input saturation, an enhanced state observer-based SMC
strategy was proposed by Hu et al. [32] to minimise the lane-
keeping errors and roll angle within prescribed performance
boundaries. The effectiveness of the control strategy was verified
via the CarSim platform; however, its disadvantages are its
complex implementation and the chatting problem. Instead, Wang
et al. [33] proposed an output-feedback triple-step controller to
realise coordinated lateral and longitudinal control. The advantage
of the triple-step approach lies in its clear design procedure and
simple PID-like error feedback structure. Nevertheless, an
acceleration sensor that increases the cost and space is installed in
vehicles, and the tracking performance of heading error is not
guaranteed through single-input single-output (SISO) modelling.
Therefore, the second motivation of the article is to revisit the
multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) triple-step control design
for the purpose of the coordinated longitudinal and lateral path-
following control for AVs.
1.2 Work and contributions
According to the literature review, the longitudinal and lateral
control of AVs not only considers trajectory planning in multi-
vehicle driving environments but also path-following control with
multiple tracking requirements, which has a significant influence
IET Intell. Transp. Syst., 2020, Vol. 14 Iss. 8, pp. 924-935
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on vehicle safety and comfort in practice. Note that polynomials
and Pontryagin's maximum principle (PMP) are widely used to
analytically plan lane-changing trajectories [34, 35] and enhance
ride comfort. However, in previous related literature, vehicle
dynamics safety, collision avoidance and driver preference have
seldom been investigated. In addition, path-following control could
seldom overcome the longitudinal and lateral control issue through
active front steering [36] and direct yaw control (DYC) based on
differential in-wheel motor torque control [37]. In this work, under
the hierarchical design framework, a novel longitudinal and lateral
control of AVs is proposed to satisfy a wide range of lane change
manoeuvres in multi-vehicle driving environments. The main
contributions are as follows:
• In contrast to [21, 25] where autonomous lane change is
performed in the simple scenario with a preceding vehicle and
two lanes, the proposed trajectory planning algorithm
investigates the cases in multi-vehicle driving environments
with more surrounding vehicles and three lanes.
• Unlike purely using lateral trajectory planning [26] or numerical
solution of non-convex optimisation [22–24], the approach
presented here offers the optimal longitudinal and lateral
trajectories as polynomials in terms of a uniform parameter that
is determined by considering vehicle dynamics stability,
collision avoidance and driver preference simultaneously.
• Different from the existing triple-step control [33, 38], a MIMO
triple-step non-linear control strategy is developed to achieve
longitudinal and lateral tracking control and guarantee the
stability of the closed-loop system under zero dynamics.
The remainder of this paper is organised as follows. Longitudinal
and lateral motion planning is described to generate a trajectory
cluster in Section 2. In Section 3, the optimal path trajectory is
selected from the collision-free cluster based on the collision check
algorithm and performance metrics. Then, the MIMO non-linear
controller based on the triple-step approach is proposed for the
longitudinal and lateral path-following control in Section 4. In
Section 5, veDYNA simulations with a high-fidelity and full-car
model are conducted to verify the effectiveness of the proposed
control strategy, and Section 6 draws the conclusions.
2 Longitudinal and lateral trajectory planning
In this section, according to polynomials and PMP, the lane change
trajectories can be obtained for different time durations. The
complete lane change process is shown in Fig. 1. The subject
vehicle (SV) changes lanes from the original lane to the target lane
with lane width W and longitudinal length of lane change trajectory
L.
The first objective is to plan a longitudinal motion. Note that
different lanes usually have different speed ranges; thus, L is a
function of the lane change duration τ and the longitudinal speed
vx. Consequently, the constraints involve the initial and terminal
longitudinal velocities of the vehicle, denoted as vx0 and vx f ,
respectively, and the initial and terminal longitudinal accelerations
are zero simultaneously. To improve ride comfort, the following
optimisation problem is built to minimise the longitudinal jerk jx:
∫
τ
1 2
min J x = j (t) dt
jx(t) 2 x
0
ẋ = vx, v̇x = ax, ȧx = jx (1)
s . t . vx(0) = vx0, vx(τ) = vx f
ax(0) = ax(τ) = 0
According to PMP, the optimal longitudinal displacement of the
lane change trajectory in the ground coordinate system is
formulated to be an analytic and polynomial expression as follows:
vx0 − vx f 4 vx0 − vx f 3
x(t) = t − t + vx0t (2)
2τ3 τ2
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The solution procedure is given in Section 9.1 of the Appendix.
The second topic focuses on lateral motion. Without loss of
generalisation, the initial lateral location y(0) is set to zero, and the
terminal lateral displacement y(τ) should be equal to the lane width
W. In addition, the initial and terminal lateral velocities and
accelerations should be zero. Then, a similar optimisation problem
is employed to minimise the lateral jerk as follows:

∫
τ
1 2
min Jy = j (t) dt
jy(t) 0
2 y
ẏ = vy, v̇y = ay, ȧy = jy
(3)
y(0) = 0, y(τ) = W
s. t.
vy(0) = vy(τ) = 0
ay(0) = ay(τ) = 0

Based on PMP, the optimal lateral displacement for a lane change Fig. 2 Lane change trajectory cluster produced by tuning τ
can be formulated as an analytic and polynomial expression as (a) Longitudinal speeds at different τ, (b) Trajectories at different τ
follows:

6W 5 15W 4 10W 3
y(t) = t − 4 t + 3 t (4)
τ5 τ τ

The solution to (4) is provided by Section 9.1 of the Appendix as

well.
It follows from (2) and (4) that the longitudinal and lateral
displacements are the quartic and quintic polynomials of t,
respectively, when the trajectory is planned to minimise the
longitudinal and lateral jerks. The expression of the lane change
trajectory has three independent variables, i.e. vx0, vx f and τ. In real
lane change scenarios, the initial longitudinal velocity is
determined, and the drivers usually hope to reach the minimum
speed of the target lane when the vehicle completes the lane
change, which means that vx f is also determined to be the
minimum normalised speed of the target lane. Therefore, the lane
change duration τ is the only parameter needed to produce the
trajectory because vx0 and xx f are fixed in a specific scenario. As
shown in Fig. 2, a trajectory cluster is produced by tuning τ = 3: 8 s
under the conditions vx0 = 90 km/h and vx f = 100 km/h.
Remark 1: Note that the objective function can be modified to
τ
obtain the minimum energy, i.e. Jai = ∫0 (1/2)ai2 dt. Then, the
longitudinal speed and lateral displacement for a lane change is
solved as first- and third-order polynomials, i.e.
vx(t) = ((vx f − vx0)/τ)t + vx0 and y(t) = − (2W /τ3)t3 + (3W /τ2)t2,
respectively. Observe that Jai minimises the energy but involves
non-zero jerks at the initial and terminal moments. For this reason,
the ride comfort is considered as the objective function, rather than
the minimum energy.
3 Trajectory evaluation and generation
Fig. 2 shows that the trajectory cluster is generated by adjusting τ.
However, how to evaluate these trajectories and further select the
most appropriate trajectory from the cluster is a problem. In this
work, to solve the two above-mentioned issues, vehicle dynamic
limits and collision avoidance are addressed. Based on these
constraints, the most appropriate trajectory is determined through a
trade-off between ride comfort and driver preference.
3.1 Vehicle dynamics limits
Note that any trajectory should be confined to the vehicle dynamics
limits [28, 30]. Thus, the stable handling envelope is first derived
from the vehicle 2-DOF dynamic model to extract the stable
trajectories from the whole trajectory cluster. The vehicle dynamic
model is shown in Fig. 3, where β is the side slip angle; V x and V y
are the longitudinal and lateral velocities in the vehicle coordinate
system, respectively; Ωz is the yaw rate; Fy f and Fyr denote the
lateral force of the front axle and the rear axle, respectively; δ f
Fig. 3 2-DOF vehicle dynamic model
represents the front tire angle; α f and αr denote the slip angle of the
front and rear axle, respectively; and the vehicle mass and the
distances from the centre of mass to the front and rear axles are
defined as M, l f and lr, respectively.
Under the small angle assumption, the side slip angle β and the
yaw rate Ωz obey the following relation [39]:
Fyr + Fy f cos δ f Fyr + Fy f
β̇ = − Ωz ≃ − Ωz . (5)
MV x MV x
When the vehicle is in the stable state, the rate of the side slip angle
approaches zero. Then, the boundary of the yaw rate can be
determined as [39]
Fyr + Fy f gμ 2 − Ax
Ωz = ≤ (6)
MV x Vx
where μ is the road friction coefficient and Ax is the longitudinal
acceleration in the vehicle coordinate system.
It follows from (6) that a three-dimensional stable handling
envelope E(t, V x, Ωz) at each τ is constructed to evaluate the
feasibility of a trajectory. Take the case of vx0 = 90 km/h,
vx f = 100 km/h and μ = 0.6 as an example. The handling
envelopes during a vehicle lane change with τ = 2 s and τ = 4 s are
shown in Fig. 4, which indicates that a small τ may cause
instability of the vehicle dynamics. Therefore, the lane change
duration τ is evaluated and constrained by a minimum that is
determined by the current vehicle speed and road friction
coefficient.
In this paper, we address the lane change strategy on a
structured road with three lanes (the high-speed lane, the middle-
speed lane and the low-speed lane). The normalised minimum
speeds for each lane are 60, 90 and 110 km/h, respectively; the
maximum speeds for each lane are 90, 110 and 120 km/h,
respectively. Consequently, there are four types of lane changes on
the road. As shown in Fig. 5, Lane 1 is the low-speed lane, Lane 2
is the middle-speed lane and Lane 3 is the high-speed lane. If the
vehicle performs a decelerating lane change from a high-speed lane
to a low-speed lane, the target speed of the vehicle (i.e. vx f ) is the

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Fig. 4 Influence of τ on vehicle yaw stability during a lane change
(a) Unstable state at τ = 2 s, (b) Stable state at τ = 4 s
Fig. 5 Four lane changes on the structured road with three lanes
Fig. 6 Representative multi-vehicle driving environment
normalised maximum speed of the low-speed lane; otherwise, if
the vehicle performs an accelerating lane change from the low-
speed lane to the high-speed lane, then the target speed is the
normalised minimum speed of the high-speed lane. According to
the four above-mentioned lane change modes, the minimum of the
lane change duration τmin, i can be calibrated and modelled by the
four maps or functions
τmin, i = ℱ i, vx0, μ
where i = {1, 2, 3, 4} represents the four lane change modes.
In contrast to the minimum, the maximum lane change duration
(defined as τmax) has no physical limit. However, in practice, it is
necessary to set a maximum τmax to satisfy the driver's expectation.
Therefore, for a trajectory cluster under any type of lane change
scenario in Fig. 5, when the parameter τ satisfies
τmin ≤ τ ≤ τmax
3.2 Collision avoidance
The second type of constraint for the trajectory cluster is to avoid
collisions in multi-vehicle driving environments. Most collision
avoidance algorithms in the literature for lane changes are
performed based on an optimisation problem with constraints on
the lateral offset and longitudinal speed to guarantee driver safety.
The main shortcomings consist of computational costs and
requirements on prior information. For example, consider that the
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SV and the traffic vehicle (TV) exchange lanes simultaneously.
When the surrounding vehicle does not send its planned trajectory
to the SV, or when the SV cannot infer the motion of the TV, the
collision constraints are difficult to establish in real time.
Considering the above-mentioned limitations, in this
subsection, a collision check algorithm is proposed for multi-
vehicle environments to extract the collision-free trajectories from
the stable cluster. A representative multi-vehicle environment for
lane change is shown in Fig. 6, where the research objective is the
SV, and five TVs are considered as the preceding vehicle in the
current lane (PVC), the lane vehicle in the current lane (LVC), the
preceding vehicle in the target lane (PVT), the lag vehicle in the
target lane (LVT) and the vehicle in the separated lane (SVS). Note
that SV can be in any lane, and then, the surrounding vehicles are
regarded as TVs. SV needs to find the collision-free trajectories in
such an environment by the collision check algorithm. Before
proposing the algorithm, the following assumptions are given:
1. S1. SV receives the driving information of TVs through
environmental perception (cameras, lidar etc.) and V2V
communication techniques.
2. S2. Lane-changing trajectories of TVs are quantified by the
proposed trajectory cluster with different τ, and no path re-
planning behaviour occurs during the lane-changing process.
3. S3. SV and TVs are homogeneous such that the vehicle
parameters are identical.
Remark 2: S1 is a general assumption in V2V control. The
driving information includes the driving intention and the location
and velocity to determine the trajectory cluster before a lane
change or to identify the specific trajectory during the lane change.
Environmental perception is used to analyse the surrounding traffic
and make predictions on the surrounding objects. Then, the
trajectory planner can make decision based on the perception
sensors and multi-object tracking without V2V.
Remark 3: S2 implies that the dynamical interaction between
SV and TVs is not considered in this paper. Path re-planning is
necessary especially when unexpected conditions exist in the lane-
changing process. Recent developments in trajectory re-planning
aim to handle the uncertainty in dynamic environment [40], and
readers can refer to [22, 24, 41] for more details.
Remark 4: S3 is not a strict assumption. When the vehicle
parameters are heterogeneous, the vehicles can exchange additional
information of the parameters through V2V. Without loss of
generalisation, S3 is set to facilitate the algorithm. Overall, S1–S3
enable SV to predict the motions of all TVs in a time horizon.
According to the initial intention or the state of TV, the
prediction is divided into three categories:
1. C1. If TV has no lane change intention when SV starts to
(7) change lanes, SV can predict the positions of TV by assuming
that the acceleration of TV will be invariant in a period of time.
2. C2. If TV decides to change lanes when SV starts steering, the
possible positions of TV can be determined based on the stable
trajectory cluster because all vehicles are homogeneous.
Specifically, SV knows all candidate reference trajectories of
TV.
3. C3. If TV is performing a lane change when SV decides to
change lanes, the future positions of TV can be predictable
(8) because TV can send its reference trajectory to SV at the initial
time.
In this way, for SV, it is possible to find the collision-free
trajectories from the stable cluster because the possible trajectories
of TVs are predictable. Considering TV, the general idea of the
collision check algorithm is to check each stable trajectory of SV
when taking the predicted trajectories of TV into consideration.
Here, we regard vehicles as rectangles; if the boundaries of SV and
TV do not overlap at every time step in a time horizon, the two
vehicles will not collide throughout the process; then, the candidate
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where xM = [x1, x2, x3, x4] and yM = [y1, y2, y3, y4] are the lumped
parameters, and xiT = [xiT 1, xiT 2, xiT 3, xiT 4] and
yiT = [yiT 1, yiT 2, yiT 3, yiT 4] are the coordinates of the jth rectangular
vertex of the ith TV. For SV, the candidate trajectory represented
by τ is collision free when satisfying the following criterion:

N
∑ Ji(τ) = 0. (11)
i=1

Consequently, the collision-free lane change durations τ that satisfy

Fig. 7 Application of the function CoL( ⋅ ) when determining collision
between SV and the ith TV at time t
(a) Two boundaries do not overlap (no collision), (b) Two boundaries overlap (a
collision)
Fig. 8 Classification of road conditions and occupant types according to
J XY
trajectory of SV is considered collision free. The overlap of two
rectangles can be determined once the coordinates of their vertices
are known.
Every point on the reference trajectory of SV is the centre of the
rectangle. For SV with the candidate trajectory represented by
(11) can be selected from the stable trajectory cluster to extract a
collision-free trajectory cluster.
3.3 Optimal trajectory from the collision-free cluster
According to the indices in (1) and (3), the trajectory with the
maximum lane change duration has the minimum longitudinal and
lateral jerks, and thus, it should be the most comfortable for the
driver. However, not all occupants in AVs prefer the most
comfortable trajectory. For instance, some aggressive occupants
would like to complete lane changes quickly, whereas some
moderate occupants prefer a trade-off scheme, and some
conservative occupants prefer a very stable trajectory. In addition,
occupant preferences are not the only determinant; road conditions
should be considered during planning. On non-pavement roads
(low-adhesion roads), it is usually desirable to have a longer lane
change duration so that the motion of the vehicle can be more
stable. In contrast, on high-adhesion roads, the lane change
duration can be shorter because the vehicle is less prone to sideslip.
Hence, a more reasonable idea is that each trajectory in the
collision-free cluster should consider human factors and road
conditions.
The longitudinal and lateral jerks are cost indexes (the lower,
the better), and the comprehensive jerk is calculated as follows:
2 2

∫ ∫
τ τ
1 2 1 2 (12)
τ ∈ τmin, τmax , the positions of the vertices of the rectangle at time t J XY = j (t)dt + j (t)dt
0
2 x 0
2 y
are calculated as follows:

x1 y1 where τ is the corresponding lane change duration, and jx and jy

x y
are calculated by (1) and (3), respectively. The road friction
x2 y2 x y coefficient μ usually ranges from 0.4 to 0.8 and is divided into
=
x3 y3 x y three levels: low adhesion, middle adhesion and high adhesion. The
x4 y4 x y occupants in AVs are also divided into three types: the aggressive
(9) type, the moderate type and the conservative type. Taking a
−lM −wM 0 0 cos φ cos φ collision-free trajectory cluster as the example, the comprehensive
1 lM −wM 0 0 −sin φ sin φ jerk corresponding to different road conditions and occupants is
+ ranked in Fig. 8.
2 lM wM 0 0 0 0 In Fig. 8, τmin is the minimum lane change duration in the
−lM wM 0 0 0 0 collision-free cluster, and τmax is the maximum duration in the
cluster. Fig. 8 also indicates that J XY is directly affected by τ. In
where φ(t) is the yaw rate of SV at time t ∈ [0, τ], and τ is the this way, the problem of choosing the optimal trajectory is
maximum value of all lane change durations, i.e. τ = max τM , τi , transformed into the problem of determining the optimal parameter
with i = 1, …, N. τM and τi are the lane change durations of SV and τ under different conditions. After knowing the type of occupant
TVs, respectively. τi = 0 if TV does not change lanes. In addition, and road friction coefficient, we propose the following equation to
x j and y j, with j = 1, …, 4, represent the coordinates of the four calculate the optimal τ:
vertices of a rectangle, lM and wM are the length and width of SV,
τopt(p, μ) = ω(p, μ) τmax − τmin + τmin (13)
respectively, and x and y denote the centroid coordinates of SV.
Solving the vertices of the rectangle of the ith TV is similar to (9),
and thus, the relevant expressions are omitted. where ω(p, μ) is a mapping function of the type of occupant and
After obtaining the boundaries of SV and the ith TV at time t, the road friction coefficient, p is the quantification of occupant type
we design a function CoL (abbreviation of ‘Check overLap’), (p = 0 represents the most conservative occupant, p = 1 represents
which only uses the vertex coordinates (as shown in Fig. 7), to the most aggressive occupant). Using (13) in the collision-free
determine whether the two boundaries have overlap at each time. trajectory cluster, the optimal trajectory is finally determined.
The mechanism behind the function is introduced in Section 9.2 of
the Appendix. When satisfying the following criteria, SV and the 4 Longitudinal and lateral control
ith TV do not collide, i.e.
In the previous section, we proposed a single-parameter-based
trajectory planning method in which the PMP, vehicle dynamics
∫
τ
Ji(τ) = CoL xiT (t), yiT (t), xM (t), yM (t) dt = 0 (10) limits, collision avoidance and driving preference are synthesised
0 to generate the optimal lane change duration τ∗ and the optimal
longitudinal and lateral trajectories x∗(t, τ∗) and y∗(t, τ∗) in (2) and

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(4), respectively. In this section, we will further design a novel 2 4
longitudinal and lateral control law based on the triple-step method ΔMz = ∑ Fxi ( − 1)ilscos δ f + l f sin δ f + ∑ ( − 1)ilsFxi (20)
[33, 38]. i=1 i=3

where Fxi, with i = 1, …, 4, is the longitudinal tire force of the ith

4.1 Control law design
tire and ls is half of the wheel track.
Before the controller is designed, the reference velocity V x∗(t) in the By denoting the input u = [δ f , ΔMz]T and the output
vehicle body coordinate system and the road curvature KL(t) are y = [ye, φe]T , second-order differentiating (16) and eliminating the
needed. In terms of a general parametrisation, the reference lateral velocity V y and yaw rate Ωz lead to the following input–
velocity and the signed curvature are given by
output equation:
2 2
V x∗ = (ẋ∗) + (ẏ∗) (14) ÿ = A0(φe, KL, V x) + A1(V x)ẏ + Bu (21)

ẋ∗ÿ∗ − ẏ∗ ẍ∗ where

KL = 2 2 3/2
, (15)
(ẋ∗) + (ẏ∗)
C f + Cr l f C f − lrCr
−V x2 −
respectively. M M φe
A0 =
The lane change kinematic models of AVs are widely l f C f − lrCr l2f C f + lr2Cr KL
established based on the well-known Serret-Frenet equations [32, −
Iz Iz
42]. We define the lateral offset ye to describe the distance between
the vehicle CG and the closest point on the desired lane, and the C f + Cr l f C f − lrCr
heading error φe = φ − φd is defined as the angle error between the − −
MV x MV x
actual vehicle heading φ and the tangential angle of the desired A1 =
lane φd. The vehicle heading satisfies φ̇ = Ωz, where Ωz is the yaw lrCr − l f C f l2f C f + lr2Cr
−
rate of the vehicle. IzV x IzV x
To facilitate the controller design, we assume that the heading
error and curvature are sufficiently small during the lane change Cf
0
manoeuvre, and the lane change kinematics can be modelled by M
B= .
[32] lf Cf 1
Iz Iz
ẏe = V xφe + V y
(16)
φ̇e = Ωz − KLV x
Theorem 1: Consider the input–output equation (21) and design
where V x and V y are the longitudinal and lateral velocities in the the MIMO triple-step control law
vehicle body coordinate system. The control objective for the lane
change is to maintain the vehicle following the desired lane, in u = us + u f + ue (22)
other words, to design a controller to asymptotically stabilise the
lane change errors ye and φe to zero simultaneously. with steady-state control us, reference variation-based feed-forward
Under the assumption of small sideslip angles, the front and control u f and error feedback control ue
rear lateral forces Fy f and Fyr can be approximated by the
following linear equations: us = − B−1 A0(φe, KL, V x), u f = 0 (23)

Fy f = C f α f and Fyr = Crαr (17)

ue = − B−1 KPy + KI (V x) ∫ ydt + K ẏ D (24)
where C f and Cr are the tire cornering stiffness of the front and rear
tire, respectively, whose values are related to the road friction where
coefficient μ. The sideslip angles α f and αr of the front and rear
tires can be expressed as ky, 0 0 ky, I 0
KP = , KI (V x) =
0 kφ, 0 0 kφ, I
V y l f Ωz lrΩz V y
αf = δf − − and αr = − (18)
Vx Vx Vx Vx k y, 1 0
KD = + A1(V x) .
0 kφ, 1
where δ f is the steering angle of the front wheel.
According to (17), (18) and the assumptions, the vehicle lateral If the control gains k{y, φ}, {0, 1, I } are designed to satisfy
and yaw dynamics in the linear region can be modelled as
kz, 0 > 0, kz, I > 0 and kz, 0kz, 1 > kz, I (25)
l f C f − lrCr Ωz C f + Cr V y C f
V̇ y = − V xΩz − − + δ
M Vx M Vx M f
with z = {y, φ}, then the output y will converge to zero
l2f C f + lr2Cr Ωz lrCr − l f C f V y exponentially.
Ω̇z = − + (19)
Iz Vx Iz Vx
Proof: Please refer to Section 9.3 of the Appendix. □
lf Cf 1 In the proposed control scheme, the steady-state control us plays
+ δ + ΔMz
Iz f Iz a dominant role as y = 0 and its reference y∗ = 0. The reference
variation-based feed-forward control u f improves the transient
where Iz is the vehicle inertia moment about the yaw axis. ΔMz is
performance when the reference y∗ changes (for the lane change,
the external yaw moment, constructed as
y∗ = 0 leads to u f = 0). Feedback control is ultimately arranged to
be the simplest PID-like non-linear controller with state-dependent
tuning gains, which is the advantage of the triple-step method.

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Fig. 9 Flow diagram of the proposed controller

Table 1 Vehicle parameters in the simulation

Para Value Unit Para Value Unit
M 1360 kg Iz 1993 kg m2
lf 1.45 m lr 1.06 M
ls 0.71 m Ca 0.37 Ns2 /m2
Cf 151,000 N/rad Cr 146,000 N/rad
lM 1.8 m wM 4.32 M

4.2 Zero dynamics analysis wheel forces by DYC and control allocation. The goal is to
distribute the input to minimise the difference between the
Zero dynamics are the internal dynamics of the system under input designed control demand and the actual control input. Considering
that regulate the output towards zero [43, 44]. The motivation of (20) and (28), a least-squares control allocation is formulated as
introducing zero dynamics is to analyse the system stability, with a
guaranteed region of attraction, when the dynamics in the input– J = min ∥ ℳFx − υ ∥
output equation are globally asymptotically stabilised by triple-step Fx
(29)
control.
As observed in (21), if the dynamics of the longitudinal velocity where
V x can be explicitly stated, the original system has zero dynamics.
We summarise in this subsection that by further designing a control −lscos δ f + l f sin δ f lscos δ f + l f sin δ f −ls ls
law for longitudinal speed, the closed-loop control system whose ℳ=
cos δ f cos δ f 1 1
zero dynamics have a global asymptotically stable equilibrium can
be stabilised with a guaranteed region of attraction. T
Assume that the road is flat and that the rolling resistance can F x = F x1 F x2 F x3 Fx4 T , υ = ΔMz Fa
be ignored at high speeds. The dynamics of the longitudinal
velocity can be formulated as and the solution Fx for the problem is given by

Ca 2 Fa Fx = ℳT εI + ℳℳT
−1
υ (30)
V̇ x = V yΩz − V + (26)
M x M
where ε > 0 is sufficiently small to avoid an ill-conditioned
where Ca > 0 is the drag coefficient and Fa is the total longitudinal problem.
force, which can be constructed by
Remark 5: Note that the MIMO control inputs δ f and Fxi can be
2 4
Fa = ∑ Fxicos δ f + ∑ Fxi (27) realised with the aid of the active steering [36] and the DYC based
on differential in-wheel motor torque control [37], respectively, to
i=1 i=3
better improve vehicles control stability and flexibility [45].
Note that cancelling the higher order non-linearity (Ca /M)V x2 is not Ultimately, the coordinated longitudinal and lateral control
structure for AVs in multi-vehicle driving environments is depicted
recommended for non-linear control. Thus, we denote the error
in Fig. 9.
ex = V x − V x∗ and ua = Fa and design a linear longitudinal control
law as follows:
5 Simulations
∗
ua = − M kx, 1ex + V̇ x (28) In this section, simulations on the veDYNA platform will be
conducted to test the proposed research. veDYNA is a proven and
where kx, 1 > 0. versatile vehicle dynamics simulation tool based on a high-
precision vehicle model. The open and modular model architecture
Theorem 2: Consider the longitudinal dynamics (26) as zero implemented in MATLAB and Simulink allows easy and
dynamics and design the linear control law (28). Then, the zero straightforward incorporation of our controller design. Real-time
dynamics of the system are input-to-state stable (ISS), and the code for all major hardware platforms can be implemented with
entire closed-loop system is globally asymptotically stable at the Simulink Coder. The parameters of the vehicle are shown in
Table 1. The road friction coefficient is chosen as μ ∈ [0.4, 0.8].
equilibrium V x∗ with a guaranteed region of attraction.
The maximum lane change duration is τmax = 10 s, and the interval
of each lane change duration is 2 s. The minimum τ is calculated
Proof: Please refer to Section 9.4 of the Appendix. □
from vehicle dynamics limits based on the initial longitudinal
From the previous analysis, the external yaw moment ΔMz and
speed and the road friction coefficient. Using the surface fitting
the total longitudinal force Fa should be distributed to four in-

930 IET Intell. Transp. Syst., 2020, Vol. 14 Iss. 8, pp. 924-935
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Fig. 10 Trajectory planning results in case 1
(a) Stable trajectory cluster of SV, (b) Collision-free and possible collision parameters
by collision check algorithm, (c) Trajectories of SV and TV
method, the polynomials of the four lane change modes are
obtained as follows:
τmin, 1 = 4.46 − 1.11e−2vx0 − 3.20μ + 2.79e−5vx20
+3.23e−3vx0 μ + 1.20μ2
τmin, 2 = 3.58 − 1.91e−2vx0 − 4.31μ + 1.45e−4vx20
+8.15e−3vx0 μ + 1.58μ2
τmin, 3 = − 0.05 − 6.53e−2vx0 − 2.82μ + 2.21e−4vx20
+1.49e−2vx0 μ + 2.18μ2
τmin, 4 = 5.04 − 3.61e−2vx0 − 2.11μ + 2.38e−5vx20
+1.25e−2vx0 μ + 1.65μ2
In addition, the weighting parameter ω(p, μ) is calibrated by the
following polynomial function:
ω(p, μ) = 1.60 − 0.18p − 1.69μ
Three typical cases are demonstrated as follows.
5.1 Automated overtaking
Automated overtaking is a very common scenario, and SV needs to
change lanes when PVC is too slow. In this case, PVC and SV in
Fig. 8 are involved. Initially, SV decides to change lanes from Lane
1 to Lane 2. The initial longitudinal speed vx(0) of SV is 80 km/h,
and according to Mode 1 in Fig. 5, the target speed vx(τ) is 90
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Fig. 11 Trajectory planning results in case 2
(a) Stable trajectory cluster of SV, (b) Collision-free and possible collision parameters
by collision check algorithm, (c) Trajectories of SV and TV
km/h. The longitudinal velocity of PVC is 70 km/h, and the initial
longitudinal distance is 15 m. The occupant in SV is the
conservative type, where p is 0.2; the road friction coefficient is
0.4. According to (31), the trajectory cluster of SV is stable when
(31) τmin is 2.75 s, and the planning results are shown in Fig. 10.
Fig. 10a shows the stable trajectory cluster of SV and the
trajectory of PVC. Fig. 10b shows the extraction of the collision-
free τ by the collision check algorithm. In the collision-free cluster,
(32)
τmin is 2.75 s, and τmax is 6.75 s. According to (13), τopt represents
the optimal trajectory, which is 6.25 s, and this trajectory will be
taken as the reference. Fig. 10c indicates that the two vehicles do
(33) not overlap at any time, and this result proves the effectiveness of
the proposed planning strategy.
5.2 Lane change during traffic vehicle lane change
(34)
To simulate a complex scenario, LVT plays the role of SV, while
PVT is regarded as TV. At the beginning, SV decides to change
lanes from Lane 2 to Lane 1, while at this time, TV is performing
lane change, and it sends the reference trajectory to SV via V2V.
The initial longitudinal speed vx(0) of SV is 110 km/h, and the
(35) target speed vx(τ) according to Fig. 5 is 90 km/h. The initial
velocity of the TV is 80 km/h, the target speed is 90 km/h and the
planned lane change duration of TV is 4 s. The initial longitudinal
distance is 6.0 m. SV starts to steer when TV has performed lane
change for 1.5 s. The occupant in SV is the moderate type, and p is
0.5; the road friction coefficient is 0.6. According to (31), the
trajectory cluster of SV is stable when τmin is 2.56 s. The planning
results are shown in Fig. 11.
The stable trajectory cluster of SV and the trajectory of TV are
shown in Fig. 11a. The extraction of the collision-free τ is given in
931

Fig. 12 Trajectory planning results in case 3
(a) Stable trajectory cluster of SV, (b) Collision-free and possible collision parameters
by collision check algorithm, (c) Trajectories of SV and TV
Fig. 13 Tracking performance of the longitudinal velocity
Fig. 11b by the collision check algorithm in Section 9.2 of the
Appendix. In the collision-free cluster, τmin is 2.56 s, and τmax is
8.56 s. Based on (13), τopt is set as 5.56 s. Fig. 11c indicates that the
two vehicles never have a collision under the situation that SV
takes the optimal trajectory.
5.3 Lane exchange at the beginning
In this case, three vehicles will be involved: PVC plays the role of
SV, while LVT and LVC are regarded as TVs 1 and 2, respectively.
932
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Initially, SV decides to change lanes from Lane 2 to Lane 3, and
TV 1 wants to change lanes from Lane 3 to Lane 2; after
exchanging information about their intentions, they plan
trajectories for themselves independently. At this time, TV 2 is
accelerating at 0.2 m/s2. The initial longitudinal speed vx(0) of SV
is 105 km/h, and the target speed vx(τ) is 110 km/h. The initial
velocity of TV 1 is 120 km/h, the target speed is 110 km/h and the
initial longitudinal speed of TV 2 is 90 km/h. The initial
longitudinal distance between SV and TV 1 is 0 m, and the
distance between SV and TV 2 is 15 m. The occupant in SV is the
aggressive type, with p being 0.8; the road friction coefficient is
0.8. According to (13), the candidate trajectories of SV are stable
when τmin is 2.23 s, and the planning results are shown in Fig. 12.
Fig. 12a shows the stable trajectory cluster of SV, the stable
trajectory cluster of SV, TV 1 and the trajectory of TV 2. Fig. 12b
shows the extraction of the collision-free τ by the collision check
algorithm when three vehicles are involved. In the collision-free
cluster, τmin is 6.98 s, and τmax is 9.98 s. Following the rule in (13),
we have τopt = 7.35 s. Note that the extraction in Fig. 12b is only
for SV, and TV 1 could also use the collision check algorithm to
obtain a similar result when taking the motions of surrounding
vehicles into consideration. As cooperative motion planning is not
considered in this paper, SV does not determine which trajectory
TV 1 will take from its stable cluster as the reference. Fig. 12c
indicates that when SV and TV 1 complete their lane changes
simultaneously, the three vehicles do not overlap at any time. The
scenario in Fig. 12c is just one case; when SV takes any trajectory
from its collision-free cluster, it will not collide with TV 1, which
tracks along any trajectory from its stable cluster.
5.4 Trajectory tracking control
According to the planning strategy, the optimal trajectory is
produced to generate the reference velocity V x∗ as (14), and the
desired curvature KL is as in (15). The longitudinal controller is
designed as (28) to track the reference V x∗, where the control gain is
kx, 1 = 200. The lateral controller is constructed by the triple-step
control (22), in which both the lateral offset ye and the heading
error φe are regulated to be zero. The corresponding PID
parameters are set as ky, 0 = 10, kφ, 0 = 100, ky, I = 10, kφ, I = 500,
ky, 1 = 20 and kφ, 1 = 20. Note that these parameters satisfy the
stability condition (25).
Fig. 13 shows the longitudinal tracking performance of the
proposed control scheme in the three above-mentioned cases. Note
that the actual longitudinal speeds follow the desired speeds
precisely. The results of the controlled system states, i.e. the lateral
offsets ye and the heading errors φe in the three cases, are shown in
Figs. 14 and 15. It can be seen that they are all stabilised and close
to zero under the proposed controller. The global trajectories of the
three lane change manoeuvres are shown in Fig. 16. Table 2 is
presented to compare the proposed MIMO controller with the SISO
controller [33] under the single lane-changing manoeuvre. The
integral absolute error (IAE) indexes show that the MIMO has
better tracking performance at the heading angle. This is because
the SISO cannot directly regulate the heading error. In contrast, the
MIMO has slightly worse performance for the remainder. One
reason for this is that the control allocation (30) does not consider
tire dynamics and the change in vertical load [45]. From the results,
one can easily understand that the lane change is completed with
comfort, safety and satisfaction at high performance, which
ultimately validates the effectiveness of the proposed control
scheme.
6 Conclusion
A new longitudinal and lateral control has been proposed for AVs
in multi-vehicle driving environments through V2V
communication. The lane change duration has been introduced as
the only parameter for trajectory planning, thereby making the
design procedure simple enough to consider riding comfort, vehicle
dynamics safety, collision avoidance and driving preference. For
path following, the longitudinal and lateral controllers are designed
IET Intell. Transp. Syst., 2020, Vol. 14 Iss. 8, pp. 924-935
© The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2020

Fig. 14 Control performance of the lateral offset
Fig. 15 Control performance of the heading error
Fig. 16 Vehicle global trajectories in the three cases
Table 2 Comparison under the proposed and SISO schemes
IAE index V x, m/s ye, m
MIMO 0.187 0.151
SISO [33] 0.013 0.149
based on the MIMO triple-step control method. The stability study 8 References
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∂vx
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17, (4), pp. 1135–1145

934 IET Intell. Transp. Syst., 2020, Vol. 14 Iss. 8, pp. 924-935
© The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2020
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1 1 According to the Hurwitz stability, the systems (42) and (43) are
ay(t) = − cy0t3 + cy1t2 − cy, 2t + cy3
6 2 stable if the control gains satisfy the conditions (25). The proof is
1 1 1 completed.
vy(t) = − cy0t4 + cy1t3 − cy2t2 + cy3t + cy4 (41)
24 6 2
9.4 Proof of Theorem 2
cy0 5 cy1 4 cy2 3 cy3 2
y(t) = − t + t − t + t + cy4t + cy5 .
120 24 6 2 With the Lyapunov function Vx = (1/2)ex2 and (28), we obtain

According to the initial and terminal conditions in (3), we have Ca 2 ua ∗

cy0 = − 720 W/τ, cy1 = − 360 W/τ4, cy2 = − 60 W/τ3 V̇x = ex V yΩz − V + − V̇ x
and M x M
cy3 = cy4 = cy5 = 0. Hence, the solution (4) is obtained.
CaV x 2 CaV x∗
= − k x, 1 + ex + ex V yΩz − V
M M x (44)
9.2 Pseudocode of the function Col( ⋅ ) in (10)
Ca(V x + V x∗) 2
Function [Out] = CoL xiT , yiT , xM , yM a = (x1, y1), b = (x2, y2), = − k x, 1 + ex + exdx
M
c = (x3, y3) and d = (x4, y4);
ai = (xiT 1, yiT 1), bi = (xiT 2, yiT 2), ci = (xiT 3, yiT 3) and ≤ −kx, 1ex2 + exdx
di = (xiT 4, yiT 4);
where both V x and V x∗ are positive and dx = V yΩz − (Ca /M)V x∗V x∗ is
1 the lumped disturbance. There exists a positive dx, max such that
sa = aai × abi + abi × aci + aci × adi + adi × aai ;
2 dx ≤ dx, max at V y = 0 and Ωz = 0 because the reference velocity V x∗
is bounded. There always exists a positive constant kx, 2 > 0 such
1 that
sb = bai × bbi + bbi × bci + bci × bdi + bdi × bai ;
2
1 2
1 V̇x ≤ − kx, 1 − kx, 2 ex2 + d
sc = cai × cbi + cbi × cci + cci × cdi + cdi × cai ; 4kx, 2 x
2 (45)
1 2
≤ −kx, 3Vx + d
1 4kx, 2 x, max
sd = dai × dbi + dbi × dci + dci × ddi + ddi × dai ;
2
where kx, 3 = 2(kx, 1 − kx, 2) > 0. Multiplying (45) by e− kx, 3t and
si = aibi × aidi ; integrating over [0, t], we have

∫
t
dx2, max
If (sa − si) > 0, (sb − si) > 0, (sc − si) > 0 and (sd − si) > 0 Out = Vx(t) ≤ Vx(0)e− kx, 3t + e− kx, 3(t − τ)dτ (46)
4kx, 2
0; 0

Else
Out = 1; which implies that
End
∫
t
dx2, max dx2, max
∥ ex(∞) ∥2 ≤ lim e− kx, 3(t − τ)dτ ≤ (47)
9.3 Proof of Theorem 1 2kx, 2 t → ∞ 0
2kx, 2kx, 3

Substituting the triple-step control (22) into (21) leads to the and the zero dynamics of the system are ISS. Based on the output–
following two decoupled closed-loop error systems: input stability (minimum phase systems) [43, 44], a straightforward
corollary is that the triple-step control (22) can globally
ÿe + ky, 1ẏe + ky, 0ye + ky, I ∫ y dt = 0
e (42) asymptotically stabilise the equilibrium (ye, φe, V x) = (0, 0, V x∗) of
the resulting closed-loop system under the auxiliary control (28).
The proof is completed.
φ̈e + kφ, 1φ̇e + kφ, 0φe + kφ, I ∫ φ dt = 0
e (43)

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