Threat assessment for avoiding collisions with turning vehicles

Paper in proceeding, 2009

This paper presents a method for estimating how the driver of a vehicle can use steering, braking or acceleration to avoid a collision with a moving object. In the method, the motion of the object can be described with an arbitrary deterministic motion model and polygons can be used to describe its extension. The key idea is to derive the analytical solution on how to avoid the object at discrete times. The union of the solutions for all times is used to estimate how to avoid a collision during the complete prediction horizon. Additionally, a decision-making algorithm is proposed that decides when to initiate autonomous braking to avoid or mitigate a potential collision. A collision avoidance by braking system, based on the proposed method and algorithm, has been evaluated on simulated traffic scenarios at intersections. It is shown that a vehicle equipped with such a system can potentially reduce the impact velocity with up to 40~km/h in left turn across path situations.