Control System Design of an Automated Bus in Revenue Service

This paper presents the design and development of an automated steering control system that has been successfully deployed on an 18.3-m (60-ft) articulated bus for revenue service in a bus rapid transit line in Eugene, OR, USA, between June 2013 and May 2015. This automated steering system provides both lane keeping and S-curve precision docking on 4-km-long narrow and curving urban segments with six stations and mixed traffic lanes while the operator controls the speed. The objective of deploying an automated bus that carries passengers for an extensive period of time elevated the system safety and performance requirements. This paper describes three key elements in the controller design that address the safety and performance challenges, i.e., high precision, fault tolerance, and control transitions. The experience of designing and deploying such a system in revenue service helps advance the field of automated vehicle by directly addressing its safety issues as an integral part of the automated vehicle control system design.

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