A STUDY OF THE AUTONOMOUS DRIVING SYSTEM OF HEAVY DUTY VEHICLE

Main objectives of ITS (Intelligent Transport Systems) are to reduce traffic congestion and to prevent traffic accidents by controlling traffic flow and vehicle operations. Typical projects of autonomous driving systems were those national projects carried out in Japan, the US, and Europe from late 1980s [1-4]. However, most of the test vehicles used in these projects were passenger cars. Heavy-duty trucks and buses were rarely used due to the difficulties in realizing the expected features of actuators and the uncertainty in the construction of control systems resulting from the non-linearity of vehicle dynamics. This paper features an autonomous driving project, based on a linearlized model of longitudinal and lateral controlling, using a heavy-duty truck equipped with advanced actuators and controllers as test vehicle. This test vehicle performs speed control by the information of on-board sensor and/or road-vehicle communications and also lane-keeping control by the information of lane marker sensors embedded on the track. It has been proven that the test vehicle could run stably at 60 km/h on straight line and at 40 km/h on a curvature of 60R. Details on the system constitution, the vehicle control algorithm and test results are described below. (A)