Saturated feedback control for an automated parallel parking assist system

This paper considers the parallel parking problem of automatic front-wheel steering vehicles. The problem of stabilizing the vehicle at desired position and orientation is seen as an extension of the tracking problem. A saturated control is proposed which achieves quick steering of the system near the desired position of the parking spot with desired orientation and can be successfully used in solving parking problems. In addition, in order to obtain larger area of the starting positions of the vehicle with respect to the parking spot for the first reverse maneuver of the parallel parking, an approach of using saturated control with two different levels of saturation is proposed. The vehicle can be automatically parked by using one or multiple maneuvers, depending on the size of the parking spot. Simulation results are presented to confirm the effectiveness of the proposed control schemes.