Combined Longitudinal and Lateral Controller Design for a Vehicle with Radar Sensors

We consider a vehicle-roadway system where the control of vehicle movement is based on the instrumentation located both in the vehicle and the roadway. In addition to the sensors which are used for obtaining the information on the vehicle, a radar based sensor system is used for providing information on the position of the car relative to a vehicle ahead, and with respect to a reflective strip placed on the road. The roadway traffic includes standard vehicles with no automatic control as well as the vehicles with automatic control units. Communication between the vehicles is not considered. For longitudinal control, we consider an Radar Based Cruise Control problem where the main goal is to maintain a desired speed set by the driver. At the same time, the controller will decelerate the vehicle if the distance and/or the relative speed between the controlled vehicle and the vehicles traveling in front are below certain limits. In lateral control, on the other hand, the objective is to follow a reflective stripe placed on the roadway pavement. An automatic steering controller will steer the vehicle according to the position of the vehicle relative to the reflector stripe.