Vehicle lateral control with combined use of a laser scanning radar sensor and rear magnetometers

This paper describes the design procedure of vehicle lateral control algorithms for automated highway systems with combined use of a laser scanning radar sensor (LIDAR) and rear magnetometers. The LIDAR sensor measures the vehicle´s lateral position relative to the preceding vehicle, and the magnetometers measure the lane following error relative to magnets buried along the center of the highway lane. It has been concluded from previous research that, in the event of front-magnetometer failure, and thus in the presence of rear magnetometers only, the vehicle lateral control algorithms can only achieve limited performance. This problem can be overcome by combining the use of the rear magnetometers with an on-board LIDAR sensor. A systematic controller design procedure is presented, which minimizes the interactions between the disturbance on one measurement output and the other output. A platoon of four vehicles, with three following vehicles under the proposed control scheme, is used in a simulation study to validate the proposed approach.