Research efforts in both academia and industry connected with the development and implementation of autonomous driving systems are increasing exponentially in last years. The project designed and presented is part of the so called Dutch Automated Vehicle Initiative (DAVI) which aims to investigate, improve and demonstrate automated driving on public roads. The work presented focuses on the path planning and following in highway environment, presenting a novel approach. A modular solution was designed, where the evaluation of risk is implemented in a path planner that select the optimal trajectory among a discrete set of feasible ones in term of comfort. The tracking is performed through a non linear model predictive controller (NMPC), that also consider collision-risk assessment information. In order to test critical situations that can commonly occur, several scenarios were designed and tested through extensive numerical simulations. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed system is capable of dealing with complex driving situation, maintaining a human-like behavior.

The automotive community is achieving substantial progress in the development of automated vehicles. But do we actually want automated vehicles and if so, how can we support their safe and legal introduction onto Dutch roads? The Dutch Automated Vehicle Initiative (DAVI) aims at the investigation, improvement, evaluation and demonstration of automated driving on public roads. DAVI is a collaboration between Delft University of Technology, Connekt, RDW, TNO, Toyota Motors Europe as well as many other Dutch and selected international partners. But, what is automated driving actually?