Human-centered feed-forward control of a vehicle steering system based on a driver's steering model

Abstract

To improve the vehicle's path-following performance and reduce the driver's work load, a control strategy for a vehicle steering system with an embedded driver model is presented based on the driver's steering behavior. Then, a new driver model of path-following is proposed according to general driver behaviors and is integrated into a vehicle bicycle model. The driver model and the human-centered feed-forward control offer tunable parameters of the steering systems, allowing the driver's work load to decrease. Then, a human-in-the-loop-based vehicle steering system was developed. Subsequently, a double lane changing test was conducted to verify the benefits of the proposed vehicle steering system with the integrated driver model. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed vehicle steering system with embedded driver model could complete the given task of tracking the desired path and decrease the driver's mental and physical work-loads, compared with the vehicle steering system without the driver model.