Tong, Zhao (The Ohio State University), Yurtsever, Ekim (The Ohio State University), Rizzoni, Giorgio (Ohio State Univ)

Justifying Emergency Drift Control for Automated Vehicles

Scheduled for presentation during the Regular Session "Highly Automated and Connected Vehicular Systems-II" (MoBT4), Monday, August 29, 2022, 16:50−17:10, Ballroom

10th IFAC International Symposium on Advances in Automotive Control, August 28-31, 2022, Columbus, Ohio, USA

This information is tentative and subject to change. Compiled on April 25, 2024

Abstract

Expert human drivers can execute emergency steering actions to avoid sudden events like a deer crossing the road. However, justifying beyond-the-limit emergency maneuvering for automated driving systems is exceptionally challenging. Emergency maneuvering often requires non-linear control policies without stability guarantees. Liability concerns, ethics, lack of safety guarantees, and non-linear system dynamics convolute an already complicated problem. Against this backdrop, we propose a principled approach to justify a particular type of emergency steering in safety-critical situations. A limit-handling controller is justified and deployed to execute the emergency maneuver upon a conventional controller's formally verified incapability to handle. We claim this check justifies the execution of the emergency maneuver as we show failure is mathematically inevitable otherwise. The simulation-based experimental validation shows that using backward reachability analysis, the proposed approach can determine emergencies. The validation justifies using limit-handling controllers for collision avoidance in a scenario where the baseline controllers fail catastrophically.