Unified Control Design for Autonomous Car-Like Vehicle Tracking Maneuvers

Abstract

Vehicle tracking has been one keen research topic on autonomous vehicles and mobile robotics. A vehicle tracking system consists of at least two vehicles. One vehicle leads a platoon while others autonomously track and follow the leader vehicle. The objective of tracking control is to drive the follower vehicle automatically to follow the leader vehicle and maintain a predetermined intervehicular spacing. Relative velocities and particularly relative accelerations are more difficult to obtain. In general, there are two ways of getting those measurements. Many applications such as in outdoor industrial settings and logistics environments require autonomous mobile robot vehicles to carry out frequent and tight turnings, as well as forward and backward maneuvers. The unified nonlinear tracking controller is able to work for both forward and backward maneuvers as well as driving and steering. The design is based on either kinematics or dynamics using an output function as the intervehicular connection.