Appropriate Sensor Placement for Fault-Tolerant Lane-Keeping Control of Automated Vehicles

This paper deals with the sensor placement problem in the realization of failure-tolerant lane-keeping control of front-wheel-steered automated vehicles. The scenario considered is one in which lane-keeping action is performed using two sensors that independently measure the lateral deviation of their locations of installation from a reference. The problem of interest is to determine appropriate locations for their installation so that the vehicle can be steered safely even in the event of failure of one of the two sensors. It is shown that for safe lane-keeping action at low as well as high speeds, both sensors should be placed ahead of the rear axle of the vehicle. In addition, the paper discusses a pedagogical problem - namely, the lane-keeping control problem with lateral error information from a sensor placed behind the rear axle. It is shown that, contrary to intuition, it is easier to steer the vehicle at higher speeds. Results based on experiments conducted on vehicles used in the Partners for Advanced Transit on Highways (PATH) program demonstrate the validity of analytical predictions.