A commercial vehicle's unexpected deviation from its current lane, often referred to simply as lane departure, can be a manifestation of any number of problems focused on either the vehicle (mechanical or electrical malfunction) or the driver (distraction or drowsiness). To address the topic of commercial vehicle lane departure, DaimlerChrysler Research, Freightliner and Odetics developed Lane Guidance™, a commercially available lane departure warning system.
The Roll Advisor and Control (RA&C) Field Operational Test (FOT) as part of the United States Department of Transportation's Intelligent Vehicle Initiative (IVI) offered an excellent opportunity to evaluate the newly deployed Lane Guidance™ System with real world data. The goal of this evaluation was to understand the performance of the system under different environmental conditions such as rain, snow and night/daytime. Additionally, the data were used to identify characteristics for potential warning scenarios as well as lane change maneuvers in order to better understand the overall system capabilities and performance. Data were collected during the FOT by the Praxair tractors from November 2000 to June 2001.
The Lane Guidance™ System was evaluated based on the following criteria:
Overall Lane Tracking Performance
Performance Dependent Upon Time of Day (Daylight)
Performance Dependent Upon Weather Conditions
Performance Dependent Upon Vehicle Speed
Performance Dependent Upon Use of Cruise Control
Performance During Lane Change Maneuvers
Warning Situation Performance (no system feedback was made to the driver during the FOT)
The general characteristics of the Lane Guidance™ System were:
The system performed better at night than during the day
The system performed better at highway speeds
The system performed best during cruise control operation when the vehicle speed was greater than 90 kilometers per hour
The general conclusion of the analysis regarding the performance of the Lane Guidance™ system is that the system performed best when the driver was potentially at the least attentive, during the night and early morning hours with cruise control engaged at highway speeds, during dry conditions.