Risk assessment and motion planning of platoon vehicles based on automatic emergency steering strategy

Abstract

Motion planning of platoon vehicles (PVs) in complex environments plays a crucial role in balancing traffic efficiency and safety. When front vehicles exhibit risky behaviors such as emergency braking or abrupt lateral deviation, relying solely on deceleration to ensure the safety of PVs inevitably compromises formation efficiency. Strategic spacing among PVs, guided by the Automatic Emergency Steering (AES) mechanism, is essential for collision avoidance and operational efficiency in diverse emergency scenarios. Accordingly, a dynamic risk assessment model is integrated into the decision-making module to evaluate PV risk levels based on their current states and surrounding interactions. A formation control mode suitable for complex scenarios is designed, supporting both simultaneous and sequential lane-changing maneuvers for PVs. In the motion planning module, a quintic* algorithm integrating scatter point planning and curve fitting is used to generate multiple feasible routes. Finally, Model Predictive Control (MPC) is applied to track the planned trajectories, verifying the practicality and effectiveness of the proposed techniques. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method in preventing collisions under complex conditions while maintaining traffic efficiency within the formation.