Explicit Path Tracking by Autonomous Vehicles

Abstract

We have suggested a novel approach to autonomously navigate a full sized autonomous vehicle that separately treats vehicle control and obstacle detection. In this paper we discuss the vehicle control that has enabled our autonomous vehicle to travel at speeds upto 20mph. We point out the limitations of existing schemes that restrict their consideration to kinematic models and show that it is possible to obtain an increase in performance through the use of approximate dynamical models that capture first–order effects. Our approach combines such a modeling philosophy with accurate feedback in world coordinates from sensors that have only recently become available. Experimental results of our implementation on NavLab, a modified van at CMU, are presented.