Tracking control of interconnected car-like vehicles using energy methods

This article deals with tracking control of car-like vehicles which can communicate with one another. To realize the design of the energy based controller, three steps are involved: firstly, the kinetic energy shaping method is employed; secondly, virtual potential energy is added; and finally, dissipative functions are introduced. These steps are executed in order to control vehicles initially modeled as mass points. The design is later adapted to obtain a control law for the car-like vehicles. These models have inputs that are more realistic, such as steering and accelerating, and not only forces as in the case of point mass models. Moreover, feedforward effects are introduced so as to improve the performance of the controller by using information communicated over a network. Some preliminary simulation results are also presented.