Article ID: 24014081
High-speed path-tracking control for ground vehicles presents challenges that are exacerbated by inherent time delays in vehicle steering systems. Model Predictive Control (MPC) is widely used for path-tracking control due to its high accuracy and performance at high vehicle speeds. However, its complexity and high computational demand pose practical challenges. To address these issues, we propose a practical control design scheme, as an alternative, which integrates feedback, feedforward, and lead compensator components. The feedback component uses output feedback of vehicle lateral errors from a look-ahead point, while the feedforward component provides curvature-dependent compensation. To enhance control bandwidth while preserving vehicle stability, we employed a lead compensator to construct the output feedback controller, optimized via a heuristic loop-shaping method. Simulation studies on a high-fidelity vehicle model were conducted to evaluate the proposed method and compared with an output feedback controller and an MPC in both lane-change and double-lane-change maneuvers. Compared to the baseline output feedback controller, the proposed approach achieved 52.98% and 48.61% reductions in root mean square error for vehicle lateral tracking in single and double lane-changes, respectively. Our method is comparable in performance and robustness to the MPC-based method for highway velocity range while requiring significantly lower computational effort.
