Merging support system considering the constraint of the merging zone

Abstract

This paper presents the merging support system considering the constraint of the merging zone. Merging in a highway is one of the most difficult driving tasks. In lane changing and merging, drivers consider about safety and longitudinal ride comfort. In addition, drivers must finish merging in the merging zone. To achieve these objectives, we propose the merging support system. It consists of the merging decision maker, the merging planner, the longitudinal controller and the lateral controller. The merging decision maker compares the selectable merging positions and selects one with smallest acceleration. The merging planner generates the velocity plan and the lateral path plan to reach to the selected merging position. The longitudinal and lateral controllers follow these plans by the feedback controller and the feedforward controller. The performance of the proposed system is tested by simulations. In these simulations, the merging decision maker and the merging planner calculates the velocity plan and the lateral path plan to finish merging in the merging zone with the smallest acceleration, and the longitudinal and lateral controllers follows these plans accurately. These results show that the proposed merging support system contributes safe and comfortable merging. In addition, we demonstrate that the length of the merging zone affects the merging decision.

Keywords

• autonomous vehicle
• advanced driver assistance system
• adaptive cruise control
• lane keeping assist system
• merging
• 2 degree of freedom control