Run control of ACV based on estimation of radius of curvature of target arc

Abstract

A kind of an air cushion vehicle (ACV) is known as a hovercraft which carries out a cruise by blowing off the air from the bottom of the body. The ACV has many advantages, such as amphibian vehicle, large payload, and so on. However, the ACV has drawbacks such as its drivability is bad. An improvement of the drivability is effective for the control of the ACV and the disturbance rejection performance of the controller is very significant. In this research we make an estimation method for the radius of curvature of the target trajectory with an image sensor. Using various sensors and image processing technologies, we get the control values which are required for controller. We verified usefulness of the proposed methods by driving experiments.