MPC-Based Regional Path Tracking Controller Design for Autonomous Ground Vehicles

Path tracking issues of autonomous ground vehicles (AGVs) have attracted more attention in recent years with the intelligent and electrified development of vehicles. In order to make AGVs path tracking problem more flexible, regional path tracking problem is discussed in this manuscript based on model predictive control (MPC) method, where the front wheel steering angle is regarded as the control variable. The feasible region for AGVs running is determined first according to the detected road boundaries. In the following, AGVs running in this region is considered using kinematic model. Then, in order to make the actual trajectory of AGVs keep in the region and satisfy the safety requirements, MPC method is employed to design path tracking controller considering the vehicle dynamics, the actuator and state constraints. In order to verify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm, simulations under various test conditions are carried out using a high fidelity vehicle simulator veDYNA, where the Hongqi vehicle HQ430 parameters are matched. The results obtained from the simulation illustrate that the proposed algorithm obtains good performance in dealing with the regional path tracking problem.