Lateral Controller with Feedforward Compensator for Autonomous Ground Vehicle Tracking Path on Sloped Terrain

Sloped terrain is common in practice. This paper proposes a lateral controller for controlling the autonomous ground vehicle (AGV) to track the reference path on sloped terrain. The impact of sloped terrain on AGV’s motion is analyzed. The lateral disturbance from gravity is modeled, and a feedforward compensator is designed to counteract the effect of the lateral disturbance. A lateral controller consisting of a feedforward compensator and a feedback controller based on linear time-varying model predictive control (LTV-MPC) is proposed. Simulations are carried out to evaluate the control performance. The controller proposed in this paper is compared with an LTV-MPC-based feedback controller which models the lateral disturbance from gravity. It is shown that the controller proposed in this paper can achieve better control performance.