On Automotive Roadway Departure Prevention

Licentiate thesis, 2010

Traffic accidents cause a huge amount of injuries and fatalities each year. Active safety systems assist the driver in critical traffic situations and thus contributes in reducing the amount of injuries and fatalities in traffic. This thesis deals with active safety from a system and control perspective. The thesis outlines fundamental physical limitations in a vehicle's dynamical capabilities and further discusses some of the existing active safety systems. Moreover, several methods for assessing the driver and vehicle's ability to avoid an accident are developed and presented. Such methods can be used in an active safety system in order to motivate autonomous interventions that assist the driver. The methods are based on vehicle and driver mathematical models and have been shown to be able to predict lane departures or vehicle instability. The methods are demonstrated on a roadway departure application but are general and can be extended to a wide range of active safety applications through adjustments in the modeling.