Control principles for critical vehicle emergency maneuvers with code and solutions

Emergency driving situations demand maneuvers at the limits of vehicle performance, where optimal control theory determines the best achievable outcome. Optimal Vehicle Maneuvers presents formulation and numerical solution methods for these optimization problems, grounded in vehicle dynamics. The book addresses dynamics modeling, feedback control, and optimization as an engineering tool, linking each technique to real-world scenarios.

The authors include safety potential analysis using crash databases to quantify the relevance of optimal maneuvering in actual collision scenarios, and coverage extends from braking and steering to combined interventions under varying conditions. Practical code segments accompany each problem formulation, and exercises with worked solutions allow readers to reproduce and extend the presented results.

Readers will also find:

• Detailed vehicle dynamics models formulated for optimization in safety-critical driving situations requiring combined braking and steering interventions
• Crash database analysis that quantifies how autonomous emergency maneuvers could have prevented or mitigated real-world accidents
• Numerical optimal control techniques addressing friction-limited scenarios where tire forces reach their physical boundaries during emergency driving
• Step-by-step code implementations enabling direct reproduction of maneuvering optimization results in research or development environments
• Structured examples suitable for self-study or coursework that reinforce problem formulation, numerical solution, and interpretation of control outputs

Optimal Vehicle Maneuvers serves professionals and engineers in autonomous vehicles, vehicle safety systems, automotive control, and advanced driver-assistance systems. It also functions as a graduate-level reference for engineering students with foundational coursework in mathematics, mechanics, and signals and automatic control.

Lars Nielsen, PhD, is the Sten Gustafsson Professor of Vehicular Systems at Linköping University, Sweden, within the Department of Electrical Engineering. A recipient of the Håkan Frisinger Award from the Volvo Research and Educational Foundations, his research focuses on automotive modeling, control, diagnosis, and autonomy with extensive contributions to international conferences and journals.

Björn Olofsson, PhD, is an Associate Professor in Automatic Control at Lund University, Sweden, and Director of First and Second Cycle Studies in the Department of Automatic Control. Appointed Docent at Linköping University in 2020, his research centers on autonomy of robots and vehicles, with emphasis on motion planning, optimal control, and safety-critical maneuvers.