Motion planning for steering car-like vehicles

In this article, using the kinematics model of a car-like vehicle with front-wheel driving we address the path-following problem on the Cartesian plane. Adopting a dynamic inversion approach we determine initial conditions and the steering input in such a way that a front point of the vehicle exactly follows a pre-specified Cartesian path. Motivation for this special motion planning problem arises from the needs of the autonomous vehicle driving using a stereo vision system. Relevant examples, i.e. path-following of lines, circle arcs, and quintic splines, are included with simulations.