Scientists propose a novel regional path tracking scheme for autonomous ground vehicles

For autonomous ground vehicles (AGVs), one of the most important issues is path tracking. Conventionally, steering and velocity control are two typical aspects of the path tracking problem. Steering control is key because it is important to path tracking and related to vehicle lateral stability. Most existing algorithms have been developed based on a point-line vehicle-road model. They regard the vehicle as a rigid point, and employ a continuous curve or discrete points to describe the desired path. Compared with practical situations, this may cause collisions when tracking a more complex road ignoring the size and shape of AGVs. In addition, ignoring the width of the road may make AGVs deviate from the designated road region. However, according to the corresponding literature, there are few discussions of path tracking that consider the shape of the vehicle and width of the road.