Autonomous following lateral control of heavy vehicles using laser scanning radar

This paper describes and compares some simple, easily applied solutions to the heavy vehicle autonomous following lateral control problem using a laser scanning radar unit. When mounted on the front of the following tractor, the sensor gives the relative displacement of the preceding trailer and the relative yaw between the following tractor and preceding trailer (although the ability to measure small relative yaw angles is quite limited). Given two vehicles within a platoon, there are two possible methods for interpolating a trajectory. One is linear and the other assumes constant curvature. Using these methods, the performance when tracking the preceding trailer with the following tractor's CG is compared to the case when the following tractor uses a measurement of the preceding tractor position as the reference. The results of simulations show the importance of using the same reference point on the preceding vehicle as the regulation point on the following vehicle.