NONLINEAR PATH CONTROL IN AUTOMATED VEHICLE GUIDANCE

The problem of path control of automatically guided vehicles along a d esired trajectory is considered where both lateral and longitudinal dy namics have been incorporated in the vehicle model, It is shown that a nonlinear decoupling controller and pole-placement can be used to obt ain a closed-loop behavior that is independent of the vehicle operatio n point. For the pole-placement, the entire state is necessary. Since the sideslip is not available from measurements, an observer is applie d, estimating the sideslip. Due to the steady state errors imposed by the nonlinear controller, a predictive filter is used to calculate thi s steady state error, The effectiveness of this controller is then dem onstrated by simulations.