Control system design with on-line preview planning for desired signals

This paper describes an online preview planning method for desired signals of 3-wheeled vehicles. Online planning has an advantage over the traditional off-line planning in reducing the influence of such factors as disturbance. In the the proposed method, the online planner is designed as a part of the control system by traditional design methods for control systems. Preview planning is added to the online planning in order to utilize the future restriction of the desired signal. Online planning constructs a feedback loop and preview planning adds feedforward to it. By integration of preview planning and online planning, the planner can prevent the controlled variable from spilling over the permitted domain better than without preview planning. This method is applied to a 3-wheeled vehicle, so that the vehicle can start to avoid obstacles earlier than the case without preview planning.