Invariant Trajectory Tracking With a Full-Size Autonomous Road Vehicle

Safe handling of dynamic inner-city scenarios with autonomous road vehicles involves the problem of stabilization of precalculated state trajectories. In order to account for the practical requirements of the holistic autonomous system, we propose two complementary nonlinear Lyapunov-based tracking-control laws to solve the problem for speeds between ±6 m/s. Their designs are based on an extended kinematic one-track model, and they provide a smooth, singularity-free stopping transient. With regard to autonomous test applications, the proposed tracking law without orientation control performs much better with respect to control effort and steering-input saturation than the one with orientation control but needs to be prudently combined with the latter for backward driving. The controller performance is illustrated with a full-size test vehicle.