An Investigation of Optimal Vehicle Maneuvers for Different Road Conditions

We investigate optimal maneuvers for road-vehicles on different surfaces such as asphalt, snow, and ice. The study is motivated by the desire to find control strategies for improved future vehicle safety and driver assistance technologies. Based on earlier presented measurements for tire-force characteristics, we develop tire models corresponding to different road conditions, and determine the time-optimal maneuver in a hairpin turn for each of these. The obtained results are discussed and compared for the different road characteristics. Our main findings are that there are fundamental differences in the control strategies on the considered surfaces, and that these differences can be captured with the adopted modeling approach. Moreover, the path of the vehicle center-of-mass was found to be similar for the different cases. We believe that these findings imply that there are observed vehicle behaviors in the results, which can be utilized for developing the vehicle safety systems of tomorrow.