Output-feedback triple-step coordinated control for path following of autonomous ground vehicles

Over the past several decades, the automobile industry has devoted much significant research efforts to developing autonomous ground vehicles (AGVs). One of the most fundamental issues for AGVs is path following, which is concerned with the control strategy for AGVs to follow the scheduled paths. This paper presents a new path following control approach, where an output-feedback triple-step controller is designed to realize coordinated lateral and longitudinal control without a measurement of lateral velocity. The main contribution of this paper is the integrated design of the observer and control gains in the framework of Lyapunov stability and input-to-state stability (ISS) theory. The effectiveness of the proposed control system has been evaluated through simulations.