This paper proposes the new control concept of driver assist function using the information of vehicle's frontal road and traffic environment such as a road shape, a road and obstacle positions relative to subject vehicle. In ITS technology, full autonomous vehicle control is the 21 century's human dream, but there will be very high technical walls to overcome. On the other hand, practical semi-autonomous systems such as Adaptive Cruise Control System which is already on the market or can be realised soon have low potential to improve safety. It is because the liability of in-vehicle autonomous technology for safety replacing a human driver is considered limited, if considering the various situations of possible accidents in real mixture traffic. So, an intelligent control assist system was designed, in which the liability for safety is fully due to drivers. Computer simulation was conducted to evaluate not only effects of drive assist control on driver's control performance in the evasive driving conditions but also effects of the control on compensation for loss of stability due to inattention of human drivers. It was concluded that the proposed intelligent drive assist system has the possibility of improving driver's control performance greatly in the view point of active safety.
Abstract