Platoon driving experiment of electric wheelchair in narrow space by using model error compensator

As one of the leading method of electric wheelchairs, platoon driving using Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) has been proposed to keep constant time-headway. The platoon driving system has been widely used assuming straight roads that has good visibility, but has not been used in narrow corridor. While, the gross weight of wheelchair changes drastically depending on passenger´s weight. In this paper, a novel platoon driving system is proposed and platoon driving experiments are examined at narrow space. The platoon controller is constructed with the inter-vehicle distance control based on ACC and precise lateral control based on target point following along the wheel track of preceding wheelchair. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by the driving experiments at the corner and U-turn in the narrow space.