Trajectory Based Autonomous Vehicle Following using a Robotic Driver

An autonomous vehicle following system including control approaches is presented in this paper. An existing robotic driver is used to control a standard passenger vehicle such that no modifications to the car are necessary. Only information about the relative position of the lead vehicle and the motion of the following vehicle is required, and methods are presented to construct a reference trajectory to enable accurate following. A laser scanner is used to detect the lead vehicle and the following vehicle’s ego-motion is sensed using an IMU and wheel encoder. An algorithm was developed and tested to locate the lead vehicle with RMS position and orientation errors of 65mm and 5.8◦ respectively. Several trajectory-based lateral controllers were tested in simulation and then experimentally, with the best controller having an RMS lateral deviation of 37cm from the path of the lead vehicle. A new trajectorybased spacing controller was tested in simulation which allows the following vehicle to reproduce the velocity of the lead vehicle.