Post-Impact Control to Mitigate the Secondary Collision by Combining LQR with Feed-Forward Control

Road traffic statistics shows that multi-event collision accidents cause significant losses to the society. The impact forces often cause very large heading angle and lateral deviation, leading to more severe secondary collision and even fatal crashes. This paper propose a post-impact controller based on an active front axle steering actuator. It can attenuate the vehicle’s undesired motion deviation after the first impact. The controller, which integrates the path tracking error model with vehicle dynamics model, is developed by fusing feed-forward control and with linear-quadratic regulator (LQR). We use Carsim and Simulink co-simulation to validate its effectiveness on both straight and bend road, the latter of which has not been studied in the literature. We also build a high-performance scaled vehicle platform for future experimental investigation of our and other post-impact control strategies.