Experimental Development of a New Target and Control Driver Steering Model Based on DLC Test Data

This paper describes the development of a driver steering model that captures driver key steering mechanisms based on the analyses of vehicle test data on the standard double lane change (DLC) course. These analyses indicate that, instead of planning and following a desired path according to the traditional trajectory-planning concept, drivers simply use the next lane center as the target points for control during lane changes. The data also suggest that drivers engage steering rate control instead of the conventional steering angle control to steer the vehicle. Accordingly, this paper proposes a relatively straightforward driver steering model based on this target and control scheme. Both the open-loop identification and closed-loop simulations verify that this relatively simple driver steering model is capable of capturing individual driver steering behavior and that the simulated steering rate matches well with the actual steering rate for all 80 vehicle test runs conducted by 20 different drivers.