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This study investigates the effectiveness of a drift-capable nonlinear model predictive control (MPC) system for collision avoidance in real-world winter driving scenarios, particularly when encountering icy conditions. By simulating high sideslip drifting maneuvers, the controller demonstrates improved performance in avoiding collisions compared to traditional electronic stability control (ESC) systems, especially at higher speeds. The findings highlight that drifting can be a beneficial strategy for maintaining control and safety in hazardous driving environments, achieving lower median lane errors in simulations involving random ice patches.
Drifting, often seen as a risky maneuver, can actually enhance vehicle control and safety in icy conditions, outperforming traditional stability systems.
Real-world collision avoidance is a core motivation for studying the dynamics and control of high sideslip drifting in vehicles, yet the practical benefit of such maneuvers has so far primarily been tested in scenarios explicitly engineered to require drifting. In this work, we explore the question of if and when drifting may be optimal for safety in real-world winter driving conditions. We present a drift-capable nonlinear model predictive control (MPC) system designed to handle scenarios grounded in crash fatality data and deploy the controller in a high fidelity simulator across road departure and oncoming vehicle collision avoidance scenarios. The controller naturally initiates and sustains drifting maneuvers to stay on the road when hitting a patch of ice on the rear axle and to avoid an oncoming vehicle that has slid into its lane. Comparisons with a benchmark electronic stability control (ESC) system demonstrate how a drift-capable controller can trade off stability for controllability to precisely maneuver through dangerous winter driving scenarios. A Monte Carlo study over random ice patches further shows that the drift-capable controller achieves lower median lane error than ESC across several speeds, while revealing that drifting emerges predominantly at higher speeds.
