Feasibility, requirements and preliminary assessment of e-horizon driven speed targeting algorithms, for enhanced Adaptive Cruise Control

According to the report from the EU,every year more than 40 000 lives are lost in a road accident. More than 90% of accidents are caused by human error. Advance Driver-Assistance Systems (ADAS) can help drivers to avoid these accidents or at least to reduce the consequence. Such systems use a multitude of sensors to perceive the environment around the vehicle,and act consequently. In the future, cars will be a part of an intelligent transport system where all players are connected. With these abilities, an electronic horizon is created pushing forward the sensor range. Information regarding traffic or hazard can be obtained from other cars or from the cloud. With the use of ADAS, the driver can be assisted to avoid dangerous situations. In a near future, all this information will be elaborated and used from the vehicle itself, reducing the possibility of human error. The thesis is a study on how and if it is possible to create an enhanced Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) function relying on e-Horizon data. Standard ACC use a radar to keep distance from the car in front, by accelerating up to a preset speed or braking. The goal is to research if curvature can be taken into consideration to create a more comfortable and safe speed profile. To do so, the onboard function obtains curvature information from different data sources. The first one, is the navigation data, provided in real time to the car through Vehicle to Cloud connection. The second one, is an onboard camera used for ADAS functions, which outputs the curvature. The recording from a GPS tracker is used to create an ideal path description, to be used as benchmark. Geographic coordinates from map service provider are elaborated, with the use of Simulink models and MATLAB to obtain a curvature profile. This will be used in the test environment to create and actuate the speed profile. The parameters, used to evaluate the performance of the speed profile, are lateral and longitudinal accelerations and jerk.