A general framework for automatic steering control: system analysis

In this paper, steering control for passenger cars on automated highways is analyzed, concentrating on look-down reference systems. Extension of earlier experimental results for low speed to highway speed is shown to be nontrivial. The limitations of pure output-feedback of lateral vehicle displacement from the road reference are examined under practical constraints and performance requirements such as robustness, maximum lateral error and passenger comfort. The in-depth system analysis directly leads to a new alternative design direction which allows to harness the benefits of look-ahead reference systems for look-down highway speed automatic driving.