The steering control of an experimental autonomous vehicle

Abstract

Experimental results relating to the steering control system of an experimental autonomous vehicle operating in a pre-defined and structured environment are presented. A method of steering control is formulated which relates second-order criteria, such as rise time and damping factor, to the parameters of the control system. With the control system described, the vehicle can track a path of constant heading with very little steady-state error and, if the control parameters are chosen in the correct ratio, it will respond in a critically damped fashion to the step disturbances which are generated by position corrections. For a curved path, demand curvature is treated as an input to the system in order to eliminate steady-state offset errors in tracking. In order to make the vehicle's performance independent of velocity, control parameters are derived as simple functions of velocity. This has the effect of allowing the vehicle to manoeuvre more tightly at lower speeds, and makes use of the increased availability of drive-system torque at such speeds. In order to prevent stalling of the stepper-motor drive system at large changes in demand curvature, a method of limiting the rate of steering is described.