Merging support system suppressing the jerk under the constraint of the merging zone

Abstract

Merging in a highway is one of the most difficult driving tasks. In lane changing and merging, drivers consider about safety and longitudinal ride comfort. In addition, drivers must finish merging in the merging zone. The jerk, which is the rate of change of acceleration, is important factor for longitudinal ride comfort. Suppressing the jerk improves ride comfort. On other hand, it causes the possibility of merging failure because of the increase of travel distance. In order to improve the longitudinal ride comfort, this paper presents the merging support system suppressing the jerk under the constraint of the merging zone. It consists of the merging decision maker, the merging planner and the vehicle controller. The merging decision maker compares the selectable merging positions and selects one with smallest acceleration considering the constraint of the merging zone. The merging planner generates the velocity plan and the lateral path plan to reach to the selected merging position. These plans suppressing the longitudinal and lateral jerk by applying the 3-sgate moving average filter. The vehicle controller follows the velocity plan and the lateral path plan accurately. This controller considers the vehicle delay by applying the model predictive control. The performance of the proposed system is tested by simulations. These simulations show that the proposed merging support system contributes safe and comfortable merging.