Advanced path following control of an overactuated robotic vehicle

This work describes an advanced path following control strategy enabling overactuated robotic vehicles like the ROboMObil (ROMO) [1] to automatically follow predefined paths while all states of the vehicle's planar motion are controlled. This strategy is useful for autonomous vehicles which are guided along online generated paths including severe driving maneuvers caused by e.g. obstacle avoidance. The proposed approach combines path following, i.e. tracking a plane curve without a priori time parameterization of a trajectory, with feedback based vehicle dynamics stabilization. A path interpolation method is introduced which allows to perform the path following task employing a trajectory tracking controller. Furthermore a tracking controller based on I/O linearization and quadratic programming based control allocation is proposed which allows employing the vehicle's overactuation in an optimal manner. The work concludes by a simulative evaluation of the controller performance.