Statechart-based representation of hybrid controllers for vehicle automation

Recently, designs for the automated highway systems (AHS) to improve the safety and efficiency of highways have attracted much attention. However, such large-scale and complex dynamic systems present a number of control issues. Part of the complication comes from the hybrid nature of these systems, which consists of both time-driven and event-driven dynamics. In this paper, an object-oriented representation towards a hybrid controller design for automated vehicles in an AHS is proposed. The traditional discrete statechart of unified modelling language is extended to model the continuous dynamics of hybrid controllers in a hierarchical and natural representation. The proposed modelling approach provides a clear and natural representation of the interaction between the discrete and continuous behaviours.