Decision Making and Trajectory Planning for Lane Change Control Inspired by Parallel Parking

Lane-changing systems have been developed and applied to improve environmental adaptability of advanced driver assistant system (ADAS) and driver comfort. Lane-changing control consists of three steps: decision making, trajectory planning and trajectory tracking. Current methods are not perfect due to weaknesses such as high computation cost, low robustness to uncertainties, etc. In this paper, a novel lane changing control method is proposed, where lane-changing behavior is analogized to parallel parking behavior. In the perspective of host vehicle with lane-changing intention, the space between vehicles in the target adjacent lane can be regarded as dynamic parking space. A decision making and path planning algorithm of parallel parking is adapted to deal with lane change condition. The adopted algorithm based on rules checks lane-changing feasibility and generates desired path in the moving reference system at the same speed of vehicles in target lane. Compared to algorithm for static parking space, the uncertainty of the space between moving vehicles and host vehicle dynamics raises stricter requirements for algorithms. Works are conducted to deal with dynamically changing scenarios, such as design of safety zone and exit conditions to avoid collision. Simulation under PreScan-Simulink environment shows that the proposed method outperforms in lane change scenarios and achieves strong robustness to inter-vehicle dynamics.