Lane Keeping Using Lyapunov Function-Based Reference Governor: An Optimization-Free Approach

Autonomous vehicles utilize low-level controllers to ensure vehicles stay within road boundaries while accurately tracking planned high-level reference trajectories. In this paper, we propose a control design that addresses both lateral reference tracking and lane-keeping safety objectives. This design exploits a Lyapunov Function-Based Reference Governor that handles control and safety constraints. We show that such a Reference Governor can be implemented without requiring iterative onboard optimization (i.e., it is optimization-free). Simulation results demonstrate that this approach can achieve accurate lateral reference tracking with safety guarantees. In comparison to an alternative solution that uses Control Barrier Functions and quadratic programming, the proposed method is able to generate larger constrained Domains of Attraction while requiring a shorter computation time of 0.12±0.22 ms.