An Optimal Control Approach To Real-Time Vehicle Guidance

A newly developed two-level driver model is presented. On the anticipation level, optimal control problems for a reduced vehicle dynamics model are solved repeatedly on a moving prediction horizon to yield near optimal setpoint trajectories for the full model. On the stabilization level, a nonlinear position controller is developed to accurately track the setpoint trajectories with a full motor vehicle dynamics model in real-time. The formulation of the optimal control problems on the anticipation level is based on a nonlinear single track model which is extended by a complex tire model and further nonlinear model details such as to match the main properties of the full vehicle dynamics model. The optimal control problems are solved efficiently by a recently developed sparse direct collocation method. Numerical results for various vehicle maneuvers are presented, including a time-optimal double lane change at high speed.