STAVE project studies the global stability of the motion of road vehicles with a human or a non-human driver. The aim is to characterize the typical nonlinear behaviors of vehicle-and-driver subject to disturbances like evasive steering maneuvers, wind gust, pot-hole excitation and so on. The knowledge of such typical behaviors enables the derivation of proper control laws either for a vehicle with a human driver or for a vehicle without a human driver.

The STAVE project aims to increase the active safety of road vehicles to reduce fatalities. Another aim is to enable (National or) International Regulatory bodies to issue regulations or standards based on a sound theoretical basis. Education of governmental staff performing homologation of automated vehicles is also a goal of STAVE.

STAVE defines some validated models of vehicle-and driver and performs a bifurcation analysis to characterize typical nonlinear behaviors. A driving simulator is used to understand and reproduce hard handling maneuvers performed on track. Both road vehicle and motorsport vehicles are considered to cover all of the possible limit nonlinear behaviors. A number of controls are considered to be used with or without the human driver.

The project is expected to produce inputs for UNECE Regulation 157 (theoretically sound reference to stability within the homologation activity of L3 automated vehicles) and ISO 8855 (edits to the vocabulary). A brief course for governmental staff involved in homologation activities is also scheduled.