Reliable and Safe Control Navigation of Multi-Vehicle Formation in Complex Urban Environment

I. Context and overall objectives In recent years, the development of fully autonomous vehicle for transportation tasks has received even more attention from different laboratories / companies throughout the world [Burns 13]. The focus of the proposed PhD thesis is passengers’ transportation in midtown or in closed/dedicated areas like inside big companies, amusement parks, airports, etc. which need autonomous shuttles between their different areas. Although if these kind of environments are generally delimited and the AGV’s dynamic is not as important as cars in motorways, nevertheless the most important components of autonomous navigation must be developed and mastered to deal with the different complex situations (which could be encountered by the vehicle) or to the dynamic and uncertainty of the environment. Another important issue of the proposed PhD subject is related to multi-vehicle navigation and coordination. Several laboratories/companies around the world are more and more involved in the general field of autonomous multi-vehicle navigation in formation [Adouane 16, chapter 6]. It is notably the case at Institut Pascal since 2000 [Bom 06], [Avanzini 10], [Benzerrouk 11], [Vilca 15a]. The coordination of a group of vehicles to perform specific tasks show important benefits and large application in different areas such as: passengers and goods transportation, agriculture, surveillance, etc. Nevertheless, some difficult problems need to be solved to achieve a suitable and reliable coordination. The numerous interactions between vehicles themselves and their environment, as well as the complexity of autonomous navigation in complex environment do not permit the direct use of neither classical planning nor control techniques. In fact, the context of multi-vehicle systems navigating in a dynamic and uncertain environment is a very challenging subject. The proposed PhD subject will be achieved in the context of collaborative research between Institut Pascal/IMobS3 (France) and Cranfield University (United Kingdom). More specifically, the candidate will evolve in the MACCS team of Institut Pascal (when the PhD candidate will be in France) and in Autonomous Systems team of Cranfield University (when he will be in United Kingdom).