A Visual Servo Controller for Lateral Navigation of Mobile Vehicles in Path Tracking Applications

In this paper we present the development of a visual servo controller to laterally navigate a mobile vehicle tracking the lane marker on a ground path automatically. Based on linear approximation of the lane marker and kinematics of the vehicle, we first derive the equations of motion for the system of lateral navigation. Then, utilizing the feedback linearization technique, we design the visual servo controller and, through a stability analysis, we can guarantee the tracking errors converge to zero exponentially. In the implementation, we adopt an efficient lane-marker detection system to measure the position and orientation of the lane marker relative to a look-ahead position of the vehicle. Finally, several experimental results are provided to validate the control performance.