Hybrid Modelling and Reachability on Autonomous RC-Cars

In this paper we apply reachability analysis to design a controller for an RC-car to drive autonomously on a given circuit. We introduce a hybrid simplification technique to reduce the order of the model; this is crucial for reachability analysis. For a successful implementation on a real system the control problem is divided into two parts: a reachability control strategy is derived for the simplified hybrid model, and a gain-scheduled controller lets the full system track the simplified behaviour. We propose a heuristic algorithm to synthesise a hybrid feedback policy. By considering stochasticity in the model, we improve the performance of the controller which is finally validated on a real physical system.