An Integrated Control Approach for the Combined Longitudinal and Lateral Vehicle Following Problem

This paper presents a novel vehicle control algorithm for the vehicle following problem. The follower vehicle is tracking the path of the leader while maintaining a velocity-dependent inter-vehicle distance. The follower is equipped with an on-board radar and both vehicles can exchange information via vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication. The proposed control algorithm combines an integrated model predictive control (IMPC) feedback controller with a feedforward controller. The IMPC feedback controller regulates steering angle and desired acceleration simultaneously; its prediction model is based on non-linear vehicle dynamics and the Burckhardt tire model, which handles combined slip. Low tracking errors are obtained by performing simulations using the high-fidelity vehicle dynamics software CarSim.