Lateral Acceleration Control for Autonomous Driving

A method of determining a target lateral acceleration of a vehicle for use in autonomous control of the vehicle to drive along a road, comprising: evaluating each of a plurality of scalar velocity functions at a plurality of key lateral positions predefined with respect to a model of the road to generate a respective set of scalar velocity values; combining the velocity values calculated for each key lateral position to generate a respective target lateral velocity value, the velocity values calculated for each of the key lateral positions being combined by adding the greatest of zero and the velocity values, to the smallest of zero and the velocity values; generating a lateral velocity field by interpolating between the target lateral velocity values; and determining the target lateral acceleration of the vehicle using the lateral velocity field and a measured lateral velocity of the vehicle.