SmartDriver: A sensor based model of a car driver for virtual product development

Abstract

Nowadays it is almost universally accepted that predictive control and a hierarchical control architecture are at the basis of human driver modeling. The control structure is often subdivided in three levels: a strategic level for task planning; a tactical level for trajectory planning; an operational level for motion control. The two lower levels are based on principles of geometric nonlinear control of mechanical systems and in particular of non-holonomic vehicles. The paper illustrates some of these principles and shows a few application examples.