An investigation on driver trajectory planning behaviors based on double lane change vehicle test data

Driver trajectory planning has been a key component in analyzing and simulating driver´s maneuvers. This paper investigates driver´s trajectory planning behavior based on vehicle test data of double lane change (DLC) maneuvers. Several hypotheses on driver´s trajectory planning for the DLC maneuver are proposed and evaluated. Closed-loop simulations with look-ahead steering controllers consistently demonstrate that by simply fitting a trajectory to the actual trajectory and optimizing the control parameters of the look-ahead controller fail to capture drivers´ steering behaviors. Based on the vehicle test data, the paper further hypothesizes that drivers use specific target points as references for control. Both open-loop analysis and closed-loop simulations indicate that, instead of planning and following a desired trajectory, drivers use moving targets along the lane to be changed to as control references during the DLC maneuver.