Decision of a Stop Position by a Following Vehicle’s Paths to Avoid a Rear-end Collision

Abstract

A vehicle needs to make an urgent stop during pulling over when a driver has a seizure and loses consciousness. In order to realize autonomous stop, considering following and surrounding vehicles and avoiding a rear-end collision are imperative. This paper proposes a method to decide a stop position and pull off the road. The proposed method is based on prediction of the following vehicle’s paths to avoid the collision to an ego-vehicle, and a load index of the following vehicle’s driver for each predicted path. The prediction of the following vehicle’s paths is estimated by applying a path generation algorithm that uses state lattice, which consists of the vechicle’s position, posture, and curvature of its path. The load index is calculated by using a cumulative curvature of the path. The result shows that 1.0 m is sufficient for the ego-vehicle to pull off and stop at the road shoulder.