A Model Predictive Control Based Path Tracker in Mixed-Domain

This research proposes a Model Predictive Control (MPC) based path tracker controller. It is designed for maneuvering an autonomous driving vehicle to follow its desired trajectory smoothly and accurately. The proposed path tracker has the following features: i) formulated in the time and space mixed-domain to improved control accuracy ii) with consideration of vehicle dynamics; iii) with consideration of vehicle control delay. Simulation and field test results demonstrate that the maximum longitudinal speed error is 2.3km/h and the maximum lateral position error is 11cm. It is 27% smaller than that of the conventional path-trackers. Moreover, the average computation time of the proposed path-tracker is 12 milliseconds on a laptop equipped with an Intel i7-4710MQ CPU. It indicates that the proposed path tracker is ready for real-time implementation.