If, When, and How to Perform Lane Change Maneuvers on Highways

Advanced driver assistance systems or highly automated driving systems for lane change maneuvers are expected to enhance highway traffic safety, transport efficiency, and driver comfort. To extend the capability of current advanced driver assistance systems, and eventually progress to highly automated highway driving, the task of automatically determine if, when, and how to perform a lane change maneuver, is essential. This paper thereby presents a low-complexity lane change maneuver algorithm which determines whether a lane change maneuver is desirable, and if so, selects an appropriate inter-vehicle traffic gap and time instance to perform the maneuver, and calculates the corresponding longitudinal and lateral control trajectory. The ability of the proposed lane change maneuver algorithm to make appropriate maneuver decisions and generate smooth and safe lane change trajectories in various traffic situations is demonstrated by simulation and experimental results.