A Nonlinear Lateral Controller Design for Vehicle Path-following with an Arbitrary Sensor Location

Abstract: This paper investigates the lateral control problem in vehicular path-following when the feedback sensor(s) are mounted at an arbitrary location in the longitudinal symmetric axis. We point out that some existing literature has abused the kinematic bicycle model describing the motion of rear axle center for other locations, which may lead to poor performance in practical implementations. A new nonlinear controller with low-complexity and high-maneuverability is then designed that takes into account senor mounting location, driving comfort and transient response with large initial errors. Design insights and intuitions are also provided in detail. Furthermore, analysis on stability and tracking performance for the closed-loop system are studied, and conditions and guidelines are provided on the selection of control parameters. Comprehensive simulations are performed to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed nonlinear controller for arbitrary sensor locations. Meanwhile, we also show that designing controllers ignoring the sensor location may lead to unexpected vehicular sway motion in non-straight paths.