Driver Steering Model Based on a Target & Control Scheme

This paper aims to develop a driver steering model that can capture driver’s key steering mechanisms from a control engineering point of view. Analyses with Double Lane Change (DLC) vehicle test data suggest that, instead of following the traditional concept of trajectory planning, drivers use target points located along the centerline of the lane they are changing to as references for control. The data also suggests that drivers engage steering rate control instead of steering angle control to steer the vehicle. Based on these analyses, this paper proposes a relatively straight-forward driver steering model based on this target & control scheme. Vehicle data of more than 80 DLC runs is used for the model verification. Both the open-loop identification and closed-loop simulations verify that this relatively simple driver steering model is capable of capturing driver’s steering behavior and the simulated steering rate matches well with the actual steering rate.