Low-level controllers realizing high-level decisions in an autonomous vehicle

The urban challenge 2007 is a research program conducted in a competitive format to address the challenging aspects of letting vehicles accomplish missions in urban scenarios fully autonomously. AnnieWAY is one out of eleven autonomous vehicles that entered the finals. As it turned out, one of the major difficulties is the combination of different algorithms for different tasks to a functioning unit. This contribution describes AnnieWAYpsilas interface between high-level decision making (path planning) and low-level control and provides herewith a simple but robust solution to handling the vehiclepsilas physics. Additionally, the longitudinal and lateral controller, which convert the interfacepsilas values ultimately to the manipulated variables are described in detail.