Unified Navigational Approach for an Autonomous Vehicle Joining a Multilane Highway from Ramp

Abstract

Navigating an autonomous vehicle through a circular ramp to join a multilane highway having high-density traffic is a very challenging task. Occupant and vehicle safety are the major considerations while establishing merging scenarios. This article proposes and experimentally implements safe and tactical navigational procedures for merging and leaving the highway scenario using the rendezvous guidance (RG) technique and its modified form. Test scenarios have been established for navigating AVs to merge and leave the highway on a multilane highway with or without the presence of any other vehicle in the zone. In addition, the navigation with enhanced performance of the modified RG algorithm is also established and compared to the conventional RG algorithm. The results indicate that time is reduced considerably by using the modified RG technique. The experimental and simulation results are compared, and their results are the same.