Autonomous ground vehicle path tracking

Autonomous ground vehicle navigation requires the integration of many technologies such as path planning, position and orientation sensing, vehicle control, and obstacle avoidance. The work presented here focuses on the control of a nonholonomic ground vehicle as it tracks a given path. A new path tracking technique called "vector pursuit" is presented. This new technique is based on the theory of screws, which was developed by Sir Robert Ball in 1900. It generates a desired vehicle turning radius based on the vehicle's current position and orientation relative to the position of a point ahead on the planned path and the desired orientation along the path at that point. The vector pursuit algorithm is compared to other geometrical approaches, and it is shown to be more robust, resulting in more accurate path tracking. (C) 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.