Lane Change and Merge Maneuvers for Connected and Automated Vehicles: A Survey

Intelligence in vehicles has developed through the years as self-driving expectations and capabilities have increased. To date, the majority of the literature has focused on longitudinal control topics (e.g. Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC), Cooperative ACC (CACC), etc.). To a lesser extent, there have been a variety of research articles specifically dealing with lateral control, e.g., maneuvers such as lane changes and merging. This paper provides a survey of this particular area of vehicle automation. The key topics addressed are control systems, positioning systems, communication systems, simulation modeling, field tests, surroundings vehicles, and human factors. Overall, there has been some successful research and field testing in lane change and merge maneuvers; however, there is a strong need for standardization and even more research to enable comprehensive field testing of these lateral maneuvers, so that commercial implementation of automated vehicles can be realized.

I. Introduction

Roadway driving is a commonplace aspect of modern life, yet motor vehicle accidents are the leading cause of unintentional injury and death [1]. In fact there were 30,800 fatal car crashes in 2012 alone [2]. One of the more taxing and dangerous aspects of highway driving are lane change and merge (LCM) maneuvers. Annually, between 240,000 to 610,000 crashes are reported to the police due to improper LCM execution [3].