Coordinated path following control for a group of car-like vehicles with an application to intelligent transportation system

This paper presents a new control law for the coordinated path following control problem. The paper deals with a group of car-like vehicles, where each vehicle is represented by the bicycle kinematic model. A two layer method is proposed, in which an inner layer is responsible for vehicle convergence to a desired path, and an outer layer is in charge of solving the coordination problem. A chained form model is formulated in the design of the inner control layer. The time derivative of the path parameter is utilized as the control signal of the outer control layer, and it is generated by different modes of operation, such that different modes represent different tasks. The main contribution of this paper stems from the coordination mechanism and its implementations for intelligent transportation system (ITS). The proposed architecture allows each vehicle to carry out a discrete task independently of other vehicle tasks, depending on the current road situation. The control law has been tested using numerical simulations.