A robust nonlinear control approach to automatic path tracking of a car

Autonomous vehicles are under investigation for future automated intelligent vehicle highway systems (IVHS). An important system component is the dynamic controller utilized to follow a desired path delineated by a reference guideline in the road surface. The tracking controller has to be robust with respect to uncertain, and possibly time varying, operating conditions, and external disturbances. In this paper, we present a robust nonlinear control strategy based on sliding mode theory which can be applied to various autonomous vehicles. The design procedure and the performance of the proposed algorithm is illustrated in numerical case studies for a sedan.