A driver model for velocity tracking with look-ahead

Understanding the dynamics of the combined system of driver and vehicle opens up for improving the performance of powertrain controls. To this end, a new model structure is formulated for accelerator pedal behavior of human drivers. The structure is comprised of feedback and feedforward with preview of the reference. A system identification approach is developed for determining the parameters in the structure. Models are identified on data from experiments with different driver and vehicle combinations where the drivers are tracking the common FTP and US06 drive cycles. Experiments where the same individual drives different cycles show the driver adapting in response to how demanding the drive cycle is and individual driving styles are studied with another data set with different drivers on the same cycle. The results show that drivers have similar feedforward for a given vehicle while the look-ahead and feedback is variable based on drive cycle and driving style. The potential of using the driver model for prediction is demonstrated. For the first time, for longitudinal experiments, it is shown that the open loop frequency response for the driver cascaded with the vehicle is approximated by the so-called crossover model near the crossover frequency.