Title: Autonomous ground vehicle control system for high-speed and safe operation

Authors: Junmin Wang, Joe Steiber, Bapiraju Surampudi

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Ohio State University, E318 Scott Laboratory, 201 W. 19th Ave. Columbus, Ohio 43210, USA. ' Engine, Emissions and Vehicle Research Division, Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, Texas 78238, USA. ' Engine, Emissions and Vehicle Research Division, Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, Texas 78238, USA

Abstract: This paper describes a new Autonomous Ground Vehicles (AGVs) trajectory tracking control system towards safe and high-speed operations enabled by incorporating Vehicle Dynamics Control (VDC). The system consists of an AGV desired yaw rate generator based on a kinematic model, and a yaw rate controller based on the vehicle/tyre dynamic models. Sliding Mode Control (SMC) is used to handle the system uncertainties. The performance of the control system was evaluated by using a high-fidelity (experimentally validated) full-vehicle Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV) model provided by CarSim^®. Compared with the results of position-error-based AGV control, significant performance improvement was observed.

Keywords: AGVs; autonomous ground vehicles; high-speed operation; trajectory tracking; VDC; vehicle dynamics control; vehicle safety; tracking control; kinematic modelling; yaw rate control; vehicle-tyre dynamics; dynamic modelling; sliding mode control; SMC; system uncertainties; sport utility vehicles; SUVs.

DOI: 10.1504/IJVAS.2009.027965

International Journal of Vehicle Autonomous Systems, 2009 Vol.7 No.1/2, pp.18 - 35

Received: 21 Sep 2007
Accepted: 27 Aug 2008
Published online: 24 Aug 2009 *

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