Path Following Control Design for Passenger Comfort Under Disturbances

Abstract

In recent years, enormous progress has been made in the field of automated driving. As a consequence, automated driving technologies are becoming increasingly popular. Research on comfort for autonomous vehicles, however, is still limited and unexplored. Some researchers address the comfort issue in path planning by velocity profiles, which regulates the instantaneous values of vehicle acceleration and jerk. Meanwhile, the actuator response to external disturbances and the inaccurate following can result in the violation to the pre-designed path, and therefore causes an uncomfortable driving experience. In order to tackle the passenger comfort issue from the perspective of path following control, this study proposes a frequency shaped model predictive control scheme that is (1) robust under external disturbances and (2) able to optimize passenger comfort by regulating the vehicle lateral acceleration with respect to its corresponding frequency. The frequency is selected based on the comfort evaluation criteria proposed in ISO 2631. Further, the proposed controller is tested in three simulation scenarios, compared to three baseline controllers with respect to tracking accuracy and driving comfort. Finally, our analysis shows that the FSMPC controller can improve driving comfort, especially at the velocity higher than 60 km/h.