30 credits - Longitudinal and Lateral Control for Trajectory Tracking in autonomous buses i Sodertalje

Scania genomgår nu en transformation från att vara en leverantör av lastbilar, bussar och motorer till en leverantör av kompletta och hållbara transportlösningar.

Background:
The increased demand for transportation lead to increased interest in autonomous vehicles. Autonomous vehicles are already a reality, however they still have some limitations. Autonomous vehicles will improve productivity, decrease traffic congestions, decrease the number of accidents, decrease the air pollution as well as decrease the energy consumption.

One of the main public transportation modes, the bus, could greatly benefit from automated solutions. Autonomous vehicles achieve better fuel consumption, which leads to reduced expenses. In the case of an autonomous bus fleet, the expenses related to the driver staff would also vanish, and running times would be more predictable. These factors would greatly reduce the final cost, making public transportation a more attractive option.

Buses are often characterized by their big dimensions, being both long and wide. These characteristics seek to optimize the fuel consumption and driver staff cost, per passenger. Furthermore, in urban environments, the roads are tight and intersections require very accurate driving, typically achieved by experienced drivers.

The current system, mainly designed for autonomous construction trucks, is able to perform well and track a desired path. However, the current algorithms need to be adapted and/or redesigned for autonomous buses.

Project Description:
In this project, you will design and implement motion control strategies for lateral and longitudinal trajectory tracking for autonomous buses. The problem consists in making sure that the vehicle is tracking a reference (i.e., trajectory) given by a motion planner with given bounds on lateral and longitudinal acceptable deviations. Moreover, it is expected that the autonomous bus is able to stop accurately at a given pose.

The project will start by investigating what is nowadays implemented on the vehicle and how well it performs, which will serve as a baseline for the developed strategies.

The developed strategy should provide a systematic and general enough approach so that it can be implemented in multiple vehicles.

The strategy will be implemented using MATLAB and Simulink.

The project will be developed in close collaboration with other master thesis students and Scania engineers and researchers. The division of the work between the students will be discussed in the beginning of the project.

Suggested content:

1. Literature review;
2. Problem formulation;
3. Vehicle (bus) lateral and longitudinal modeling.
4. Investigation and performance review of the new longitudinal interface (TMS/XBR):
1. Experiment design;
2. Experiment and analysis;
5. Longitudinal control design:
1. Define the scenarios in which the vehicle needs to operate;
2. Design a trajectory tracking controller, focusing on stopping at a given pose at a given time;
6. Lateral control design:
1. Investigate the performance of the current controller;
2. Investigate the need for combined lateral and longitudinal control (instead of separated);
3. Design a trajectory tracking controller, focusing on stopping at a given pose at a given time;
7. Simulate and validate;
8. Experiment and validate;
9. Future work and lessons learned;

Details
Number of students: 1-2
Start date for the project: January 2019
Location: Scania CV AB, Skutan, Södertälje 

Qualifications
Master student with a background in control theory. Knowledge in system identification and vehicle dynamics are not a requirement but it will be valued.

Solid understanding and use of MATLAB and Simulink is a requirement. The student should be able to create, analyze, and interpret functions and Simulink blocks. The student should also know how to run simulations and analyze the resulting data.

Contact persons and supervisors:
Henrik Pettersson, Phone: +46 8553 503 66, Email: