Event-driven control system : autonomous vehicle

Abstract

In an epoch where speed is governing everyones lifestyle, driving was never an exception and accident rates started to increase from year to another. In order to keep accident rates from increasing and ensure safer rides in the streets, autonomous vehicles started to be questioned and researched. But for which extent is an autonomous vehicle trusted? Ensuring safe autonomous vehicle requires a multi-disciplinary approach and coordination among all functional levels of the vehicle model, and thus, the birth of the ACC and EDACC systems. The ACC is a system that takes the role of drivers and helps reduce traffic congestion. In this research, Stateflow is used as the brain of the system that receives signals from sensors, computes them and behave accordingly to ensure a comfortable, stable and safe ride not only for the host vehicle passengers, but also the whole environment. In addition to ACC, some events were introduced to the system like the sudden presence of a pedestrian in the street, or the existence of a stop sign… Those events make the system even smarter, and thus, closer to real life… In order for the system to behave bravely and avoid crashes, controllers were added to the vehicle model, the upper level of the ACC specifically, which will take action and commend the vehicle to accelerate, decelerate or stop according to the current state of the environment.