Safe Driving Envelopes for Shared Control of Ground Vehicles

Leveraging new technology in vehicle actuation and sensing, the authors present a control framework for obstacle avoidance and stability control using safe driving envelopes. One of these envelopes is defined by the vehicle handling limits and the other is based on spatial limitations imposed by the environment. A Model Predictive Control (MPC) scheme determines at each time step if the current driver command allows for a safe vehicle trajectory within these two envelopes, intervening only when such a trajectory does not exist. In this way, the controller shares control with the driver in a minimally invasive manner while allowing the driver access to the full capabilities of the vehicle.