The Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) took second place in the world at an autonomous driving control competition hosted by a world-renowned academic society.

ETRI announced on the 12th that it won a silver medal in the autonomous driving control benchmark competition at the 2023 IEEE Decision and Control Conference (CDC), the most prestigious international academic conference in the field of control systems held in Singapore at the end of last year.

The competition presented a benchmark problem on body control and energy consumption optimization of an electric vehicle (EV) equipped with four in-wheel motors (IWM).

Challengers are required to design their own controller using the simulator for a full 4-IWM electric vehicle and an interface for controller design.

The autonomous driving control competition requires solving two tasks: acceleration and braking on rough and slippery roads, and double lane changes.

The goal is to design a controller that controls the body's driving trajectory and desired movement while simultaneously minimizing energy consumption.

The rough road conditions given in the competition problems are unknown to the challengers, and the final evaluation is performed using the undulation patterns for various roads provided by the organizer.

ETRI researchers have developed a method to solve the problem of poor performance using model predictive control and neural network integration. The challenge results were announced under the title ‘Improving vehicle stability under driving conditions.’

To solve the given task, the ETRI team applied a slip ratio controller that maintains the slip between the vehicle's wheels and the road surface at a constant ratio to secure driving performance on slippery roads.

In addition, Model Predictive Control technology was introduced to change the dual lane according to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standard.

In particular, it was designed to reduce the resistance that occurs when steering by applying the cornering resistance concept to save driving energy.

In addition, the steering angle and the vehicle's yaw moment are appropriately adjusted to minimize driving energy and improve stability when changing lanes.

The developed driving control technology was successfully applied to the electric vehicle simulator of the competition.

We plan to apply the results from this competition to a test vehicle currently under development by ETRI, and continue to develop improved control technology by combining it with neural network algorithms.

This test platform, currently under self-development by ETRI, is based on an integrated drive module that combines the steering, driving, and suspension devices into a single module, and is capable of four-wheel independent drive and steering.

ETRI Robot and Mobility Research Lab's Dr. Jeong-Hyeon Choi said, "We plan to advance autonomous driving control technology so that it can be applied to mobility and electric vehicle-related companies. In particular, the future task is to implement an algorithm that combines model predictive control and artificial neural networks so that it can operate in real time even on low-cost embedded systems,” he said.

ETRI Gyeonggi Research Center Director Byun Woo-jin also said, “This technology is expected to contribute to improving the technological capabilities of domestic industries as it can be transferred to the field of ‘stable and energy-efficient autonomous driving in mobility systems’ in the future.”

ETRI's Robot and Mobility Research Lab is conducting various research in the field of robotics, including autonomous vehicle driving, environmental perception of mobile robots, and human following.

A total of 22 teams from around the world, including the United States, China, Japan, and Portugal, participated in this competition, and the teams that advanced to the finals presented their autonomous driving technologies in the poster session presentations at the academic conference.

The research team of the Robot and Mobility Research Lab of the ETRI Daegyeong Research Center that took on this competition consists of Dr. Jeong-Hyeon Choi, Dr. Yong-Sik Jin, Dr. Dong-Yeop Kang, and intern researcher Chung-Geun Kim.

The technology developed in this competition will be published in the international academic journal Unmanned Systems.

This study was conducted with the support of the ‘Smart Transport Logistics Autonomous Driving Robot Platform Construction Project’ of the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy and the Korea Institute for Advancement of Technology (KIAT).