Human-vehicle dynamic model with driver’s neuromuscular characteristic for shared control of autonomous vehicle

Abstract

Over a long period of time, the fully autonomous vehicle is far from commercial application. The concept of ‘human-vehicle shared control (HVSC)’ provides a promising solution to enhance autonomous driving safety. In order to characterize the evolution of the driver’s feature in the process of HVSC, a dynamics model of HVSC with the driver’s neuromuscular characteristic is proposed in this paper. It takes into account the driver’s neuromuscular characteristics, such as stretch reflection, feedback stiffness, etc. By designing a model predictive control (MPC) controller, the feedback of the vehicle’s state and steering torque is constructed. For validation of the model, driving simulation has been conducted in our table-based driving simulator. The vehicle state and the surface electromyography of the driver’s arm working muscle group are collected simultaneously. Subsequently, the hierarchical least square (HLS) parameter identification and unscented Kalman filter (UKF) observer is used to identify and estimate the important characteristic parameters respectively based on the experimental results. The comparisons show that the HVSC can characterize the vehicle’s dynamic state and the driver’s personalized characteristic can be identified by HLS. This paper will serve as a theoretical basis of control strategy allocation between the human and vehicle during shared control for L3 class autonomous vehicle.