Effect of kinematic parameters on MPC based on-line motion planning for an articulated vehicle

The aim of this article is to analyze the effect of kinematic parameters on a novel proposed on–line motion planning algorithm for an articulated vehicle based on Model Predictive Control. The kinematic parameters that are going to be investigated are the vehicle’s velocity, the maximum allowable change in the articulated steering angle, the safety distance from the obstacles and the total number of obstacles in the operating arena. The proposed modified path planning algorithm for the articulated vehicle belongs to the family of Bug-Like algorithms and is able to take under consideration, the mechanical and physical constraints of the articulated vehicle, as well as its full kinematic model. During the on-line motion planning algorithm, the MPC controller controls the lateral motion of the vehicle, through the rate of the articulation angle, while driving it accurately and safely over the on-line formulated desired path. The efficiency of the proposed combined path planning and control scheme is being evaluated under numerous simulated test cases, while exhaustive simulations have been made for analyzing the dependency of the proposed framework on the kinematic parameters.