Evaluation of Lane Departure Correction Systems Using a Regenerative Stochastic Driver Model

Evaluating the effectiveness and benefits of driver assistance systems is crucial for improving the system performance. In this paper, we propose a novel framework for testing and evaluating lane departure correction systems at a low cost by using lane departure events reproduced from naturalistic driving data. First, 529 096 lane departure events were extracted from the Safety Pilot Model Deployment database collected by the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute. Second, a stochastic lane departure model consisting of eight random key variables was developed to reduce the dimension of the data description and improve the computational efficiency. With this purpose, we used a bounded Gaussian mixture model to describe drivers' stochastic lane departure behaviors. Then, a lane departure correction system with an aim point controller was designed, and a batch of lane departure events was reproduced from the learned stochastic driver model. Finally, we assessed the developed evaluation approach by comparing lateral departure areas of vehicles between with and without correction controllers. The simulation results show that the proposed method can effectively evaluate lane departure correction systems.