Abstract: With the analysis of preceding object motion feature and vehicle-borne radar measuring principle, a novel target motion model is established in the vehicle-borne radar coordinate system. This target motion model considers the relative motion of the intertial coordinate, the vehicle coordinate and the radar coordinate system. Also other specialness of ground vehicle were taken into account in the model, such as that the motion of ground vehicle is a 2D motion because of the limitation of ground surface, the vehicle mobility is small and the tracking coordinate system is moving. The whole motion states of the preceding target, including the longitudinal and lateral velocities, the longitudinal and lateral positions were estimated by the algorithm of adaptive Kalman filter, because it was difficult to determine the statistics of the system process noise and measure noise. Finally, road experiments, in which the host car was equipped with millimeter-wave radar and the preceding car was equipped with high precision automotive testing equipments, were carried out to verify the feasibility and performance of the estimation method. The results prove that the method can provide fine estimation accuracy, better filter convergence and stability.

Key words: vehicle engineering, vehicle-borne millimeter-wave radar, target motion model, state estimation, adaptive Kalman filter