A Novel Combined Decision and Control Scheme for Autonomous Vehicle in Structured Road Based on Adaptive Model Predictive Control

In the research of autonomous vehicles, most existing studies treat the decision/planning and control as two separate problems. This idea originates from robotics. But since there are essential differences between robot and autonomous vehicle, the structure in Robotics may not be suitable for autonomous vehicles. Considering decision/planning and control separately may affect the performance of autonomous vehicle under complex driving conditions. To fill in the research gap, this paper proposes a novel scheme which considers the local motion planning and control in a combined manner. Firstly, the local motion planning is transformed into the longitudinal control problem based on the proposed scenario adaptive MPC, by which the motion behavior (driving along the global path, car-following, lane-change) can be automatically decided. Then, the lateral MPC controller is designed to track the global path and conduct the local motion commands. To ensure the performance of the path tracking control and a smooth lane-change process simultaneously, an adaptive weight mechanism is introduced in the lateral controller. Comprehensive case studies including both straight and curve road are conducted based on Carsim-Simulink co-simulation platform. The results show that the proposed algorithm can not only ensure the vehicle safety in complex driving conditions, but also ensure that the vehicle can drive at its desired velocity as much as possible by intelligently judging the most proper motion behaviors.