Systematic Design of A Low-Cost Vision Following Control System

We describe a leader-follower control system that allows a follower vehicle to track the leader vehicle with a give lateral and longitudinal offset. Our approach, using a monocular camera for detection and tracking, provides a low-cost solution for the leader-follower system. The speed and steering control algorithm was based on the projection of the offset in longitudinal and lateral directions, we proved that our approach guarantees stability and convergence. The system was mounted on nonholonomic robots and tested on both straight and curved paths, test results showed that our approach is very robust within a two-vehicle system and the follower can track the preceding vehicle precisely in the longitudinal and lateral direction.