Visual control of an autonomous vehicle (BART)-the vehicle-following problem

The authors consider the problem of vehicle-following including automatic steering and speed control of an autonomous vehicle following the motion of a lead vehicle. A visual control system for vehicle-following is presented. The system consists of the following modules: image processing, recursive filtering, and a driving command generator. First, the range and heading signal of the lead vehicle are obtained by visually identifying a unique tracking feature on the lead vehicle. Based upon this information, appropriate steering wheel and speed commands for driving are generated, which are then downloaded and executed on a microprocessor controller. The visual control system was tested on BART (Binocular Autonomous Research Team), a testbed vehicle developed at Texas A&M University for autonomous mobility. Successful full-scale test runs have been accomplished for speeds up to 20 mi/h