Design of a Lateral Controller for Cooperative Vehicle Systems

This paper is concerned with Advanced Transportation Systems, in particular, the design of controllers for Fully-Automated Vehicle Operation. We specifically consider the design and implementation of a lateral controller for a cooperative vehicle system being developed at The Ohio State University. The objective of the lateral controller is to steer the vehicle to follow a retroreflector stripe placed on the roadway pavement using radar sensors. The structure and the parameters of the controller are determined during simulations and analytic studies. The controller models are then downloaded into two high-speed computer systems which are interconnected to simulate the operation of the closed loop system in real time and provide a “hardware-in-the-loop” environment. Finally, the computer containing the controller dynamics is installed in the vehicle and field experiments are conducted.