Integrated lateral and longitudinal vehicle control for an emergency lane change manoeuvre design

A lane change manoeuvre is one of the many appropriate responses to an emergency situation. The design of an Emergency Lane Change (ELC) manoeuvre for a platoon of two vehicles is considered in this paper. In response to the presence of a stationary or a slowly moving obstacle in the lane or any such emergency, the lead vehicle in the platoon designs an ELC trajectory online and broadcasts the trajectory curvature information in real time to its follower. The problem considered in this paper is the design of an integrated lateral and longitudinal controller that enables the follower to track the lead vehicle's trajectory, while maintaining a desired following distance. A sliding mode controller is developed for this purpose and its performance is demonstrated in simulations.