Copyright e IFAC Control in Transportation Systems,

Braunschweig, Germany, 2000

NAVIGATION AND CONTROL OF AN

AUTONOMOUS VEHICLE

Andreas Simon * Ina Sohnitz * Jan C. Becker *

Waiter Schumacher *

* Institute of Control Engineering

Technical University Braunschweig
Hans-Sommer-Str. 66
38106 Braunschweig, Germany

Abstract: This paper describes the fusion of sensor data for the navigation of an
autonomous vehicle as well as two lateral control concepts to track the vehicle along
a desired path. The fusion of navigation data is based on information provided by
multiple object-detecting sensors. The object data is fused to increase the accuracy
and to obtain the vehicle's state from the relative movement w.r.t. the objects.
The presented lateral control methods are an LQG/ H 2 -design and an input-output
linearizing algorithm. These control schemes were both implemented on a test vehicle.
Copyright ~ 2000 IFAC

Keywords: Autonomous vehicles, multisensor integration, sensor fusion, robust

control, LQG control, least square estimation, navigation systems, state estimation,
tracking

1. INTRODUCTION

Autonomous vehicles have been under research

investigation for the last thirty years following a absolute
veNcle
number of different objectives. The project partly position

described in this paper aimed at the automation

of the durability tests of commercial road vehi-
cles (Weisser et al., 1998).
The purpose of the decentralized control system
of the autonomous vehicle (Becker et al., 1998) is
to manage all guidance and control tasks. It uses
information from a number of different sensors to
determine a feasible motion of the vehicle (fig. 1).
These sensors can be' classified into ego-position-
detecting sensors and object-detecting sensors. A
stereo vision sensor (Goldbeck et al., 1998) de-
tects the road lane markings and outputs the
lane boundaries as a third-order polynomial. Ob-
jects in the vehicle environment are detected by Fig. 1. Structure of the vehicle guidance system
the stereo vision sensor, four laserscanners and
a radar sensor and combined by a sensor fusion

449
module (Becker, 1999). A navigation data fusion
module combines sensor data to estimate the ego-
position of the vehicle. Input to this module is
the data of a DGPS based inertial measurement
system and information about objects and lane
markings in the vehicle environment. The sub-
sequent motion planning module generates the
desired motion, containing the desired path and
velocity of the vehicle. The task of the vehicle con-
trol system is to generate a steering angle signal,
which ensures the robust tracking of the vehicle
along the desired path. This signal is transmitted
to a robot driver, which is able to turn the steering
wheel, operate the accelerator, brake and clutch
pedal and to change gears. The desired velocity
is also sent to the robot, as the longitudinal con-
trol to adjust the velocity is implemented in the
control unit of the robot.
2. MULTISENSOR CONCEPT AND SENSOR
FUSION
2.1 Multisensor Concept
In this section, the multisensor fusion system of
the autonomous vehicle is presented. The objec-
tives of this system are to create a unified de-
scription for the target data in this heterogeneous
sensor environment and to accomplish an overall
reduction of the large amount of sensor data for
the subsequent systems of the autonomous vehicle
as well as improving the accuracy of the estimated
target states by combining information delivered
by different sensors.
The autonomous vehicle is equipped with a stereo
vision sensor, four laserscanners and a radar sen-
sor for the detection and the tracking of obstacles
that could potentially collide with the vehicle. The
detection range of these sensors is overlapping in
a large area (fig. 2) in front of the vehicle, which is
obviously the most important area for the vehicle
path planning. For safety reasons this task is per-
rear
Laser-
scanner
Fig. 2. Range of the object-detecting sensors
formed by a multitude of heterogeneous sensors.
This multisensor concept includes the following
sensors for object detection:
• A stereo vision sensor is mounted behind the
front screen. It is directed forwards with a
viewing angle of 30° horizontally and 23°
450
vertically and is aimed for mid and long
range obstacles. This sensor simultaneously
performs the tasks of object detection and
lane recognition.
• Two laserscanners are mounted at the left
and right end of the front bumper. Each
sensor covers a range of 270°. The sensors
overlap in the most important front viewing
area. Further, a laserscanner with three laser
beams at different angles is mounted in the
center of the front and the rear bumper,
respectively. These laserscanners are more
robust to dynamic disturbances than single
beam sensors. Thus the laserscanner system
by itself provides a total look-around. The
laserscanners are design for short, mid and
long range.
• A long range radar sensor with a small view-
ing angle is mounted on the front bumper.
It can be seen that the degree of redundancy
increases with the importance of the observed
area. Different wavelength and signal analysis
principles are used by the sensors.
2.2 Sensor Data Fusion
Since the dissimilar sensors work independently
and unsynchronized from each other and target
tracking is performed by each sensor individually,
the data received from the sensors has to be
time synchronized first in order to be ready for
further processing. This is called data alignment.
The prediction equations of a Kalman filter are
implemented to predict sensor and covariance
data from the sensor measurement time to the
computing time of the fusion module.
The data set of all sensors consists of position
and kinematic variables. Each sensor uses a tar-
get description that fits best to its measurement
principles. The vision system describes an object
by a cuboid that totally surrounds the detected
target with its sides parallel to the axes of the
sensor. In contrast the laserscanners used in this
project describe an object by three characteristic
points. These points consist of the point of the
detected object closed to the sensor as well as of
the outermost points to the left and right of the
object. Such a compact object representation is
necessary to guarantee real-time communication
of the sensors with the fusion system.
The next task in this multisensor environment
is to decide whether observations from different
sensors actually represent the same target. This
problem is called data association. Since the tar-
get tracking is done by each sensor individually,
the task of the data association unit in this sensor
fusion module is to decide whether tracks from
the different sensors actually represent the same
target. The sensors are also mounted at different
locations on the vehicle and thus have different
viewing angles and perspectives onto the road
and the observed obstacles. Therefore, further
calculations in addition to the gating and target
association algorithms are implemented.
The final task is the target state estimation or
track data fusion. Here the corresponding targets
are combined after it has been decided that two
tracks actually represent the same target using
Kalman filter based algorithms such as measure-
ment fusion or information filter.
Since the combined sensors may detect up to
90 objects during one sample period, a major
constraint for the implementation of the fusion
algorithms is that the system has to work online
and in real time. Therefore good performance is
just as important as a computationally efficient
implementation of the algorithms.
The sensor fusion achieves a large reduction of
the vast amount of data from the object-detecting
sensors of the vehicle as well as an improvement
of the accuracy by using the synergy of comb-
ing information. The output of the object sensor
fusion is therefore well suited to be fused with
the position sensors of the vehicle to improve the
estimation of the vehicle ego-position.
3. NAVIGATION DATA FUSION
3.1 Overview
The objective of the fusion of navigation data
is the estimation of the absolute vehicle posi-
tion (x, y) and orientation tP in world coordi-
nates (fig. 3). This task is managed by combin-
ing information of a number of different sensors
such as a DGPS based inertial measurement unit,
object-detecting sensors and a lane marking sen-
sor based on stereo vision. The output of the
object-detecting sensors is preprocessed by the
sensor fusion module as depicted in fig. 1. In addi-
tion, the current steering angle 0 and the velocity
of the rear-axis v F are used.
x The objective of this module is to increase the
Fig. 3. Relevant state quantities for the navigation
fusion
451
In fig. 4 the structure of the navigation data fusion
is presented. The availability of the navigation
sensor data may be limited, e.g. due to missing
lane markings and laserscanner objects or due to
an occlusion of GPS satellites. The only sensors
with a constant data flow used in this project are
the sensors of the robot driver, which measure 0
and v F . Therefore, the core part of this structure
is the dead reckoning navigation supported by
a simple vehicle model, which is fed with the
output of the robot drive v F and o. The main
disadvantage of a pure dead reckoning navigation
would be a rapid drift of the estimated vehicle
position. To reduce this effect, the input of this
navigation is supported by evaluating the relative
movement of objects in the vehicle environment
as described below.
Data Fusion X,Y,'l/J
lane boundary
information
digital map
absolute
vehicle
detected objects
14---...... position
x,y,'l/J
Fig. 4. Structure of the navigation data fusion
The vehicle position estimated by the dead reck-
oning navigation is also supported by considering
the trajectories of detected objects and further
information of lane boundaries. This information
is provided by sensors described above, e.g. by
a vision sensor and laserscanners. However, the
remaining drift of this estimation can only be
stabilized over a long period by using an absolute
position sensor such as a DGPS sensor. In this pa-
per the module to evaluate the object movements
is described in detail.
3.2 Object Movement Evaluation
confidence of the velocity v F and the angular yaw
velocity tb of the vehicle by considering informa-
tion about the relative motion of objects in the
vehicle environment. According to fig. 5 the rela- error of the solution of eq. 5 and 6 in the previous
tive movement of an obstacle v O is a superposition measurement interval is interpreted as the object
of motion yWo. The approach to solve eq. 5 and 6
for v F and ~ in the measurement interval k is
• the motion of the obstacle over ground v Wo
divided into three steps:
• and the vehicle motion (v F , ~).
F • Estimating the absolute object motion yWO
X,V
based on the previous estimation interval
k-l
v~VO"'-iHEt1I--'-_ • Determining the new angular yaw velocity
object ~(k) using eq. 5 and 6 and considering the
last velocity vF(k - 1)
vF • Determining the new vehicle velocity v F (k)
I
I using eq. 5 and considering ~(k)
I
I
To determine ~ and v F the equation system
y
I
+---:-----++t- consisting of eq. 5 and 6 is solved by applying the
P~ least squares method. Before using this method
the equation system has to be expressed in the
Fig. 5. Relative object motion following representation
The relative velocity of each object in the vehicle y = Cx+e, (9)
environment can be expressed by
where e is the equation error to be minimized. The
F
v~ = P~ . ~ + v";'o - v (1) error vector e can be interpreted as an observer
v~ = -p~ . ~ + v';'O (2) error corresponding to the observer vector y. All
known uncertainty in eq. 9 is represented bye.
with In general, if e is correlated and unbiased the
p~ . ~ = a ~ cos () (3) solution of eq. 9 is
P~ . ~ = a ~ sin (). (4) x = (C T E- 1 C}-lCTE- 1 y, (10)
where E is the covariance matrix Cov(e) of the
In the following the movements of the objects are observer error e. The quality of this estimation
assumed to be not correlated. If n objects are of x can be expressed as the covariance of the
observed, a system of m = 2n linear equations estimation error x = x-x. For deriving the esti-
for the quantities v F and ~ is given by mation error the measurement vector y is splitted
v~ = pfy . tb + v~o - v
F into the true observer value and its measurement
vg, = P~y . ~ + v~o - v
F error: .y = Yo + e. With these considerations, the
estimation error is given by
(5)
o 0 .i. wo F
x = _(CT E- 1 C}-lCTE-1e (11)
v(n-l):>: = P(n-l)y . 'I' + v(n_l):>: - v
o
v n :>: =
O' Wo
P ny . t/J + v n :>: - V
F Cov(x) = (CTE-1C}-1. (12)

and Since all uncertainty is represented bye, the ma-

o . wo trix C and the observer vector y contain only
= -PI:>:
o
• t/J + v 1y
. wo
measurement data without any information about
= -P2:>: . t/J + v 2y uncertainty. For the determination of ~ the ob-
(6) server vector y is a composition of the measured
o . wo object velocities yO and the vehicle velocity v F •
= -P(n-l):>: • t/J + V(n-l)y
The matrix C degenerates to a column vector
= _pO .• i.
n:>: 'I'
+ VWO
ny containing the object positions:
or in vector notation by O F

y~ = P~ . ~ + y";'O _ yF (7)
v I:>: +v
O
V 2:>: +v
F °
PH'
P2y
y~ = _p~ . ~ + y';'o. (8)
o F 0
It has to be taken into account that all quantities v(n-l):>: v + P(n-l)y
O F 0
v n:>: +v
used are uncertain. Their distribution is consid-
ered to be Gaussian and can be characterized by
y=
v~°
C= Pn
-Pl:>:
o (13)
0
their mean and variance. Since the object mo- v2y -P2:>:
tion over ground yWO is unknown, it has to be
estimated for objects which are detected again.
However, for new objects yWO is assumed to be
zero. To accomplish this, the remaining equation

452
In addition, for solving eq. 9, y has to be com-
pleted with the absolute object motion v Wo :
El = Yl +
(14)
The equation error e of eq. 9 represents the un- (22)
certainty of all quantities which can be described
by their variances. e is characterized by

E{e} = 0 (15)
E = Cov{e} = Cov{ y. - Cx}
Finally, the new estimation of the angular yaw
= Cov{y} + Cov{Cx} + Cov{v wo }' velocity "j;(k) can be determined using eq. 10 and
(16)
12. For this purpose the previous estimation of the
where v Wo is the absolute object movement de- vehicle velocity v F (k -1) and the estimated abso-
rived from the previous estimation interval k - 1. lute object movement v Wo is used. For deriving
the new estimation of the vehicle velocity v F (k),
IT the measurements of the object positions are eq. 5 must be used together with "j;(k). Eq. 13 is
considered to be uncorrelated, only the primary transformed to:
diagonal of Cov{Cx} is filled: o
p~
O'
Cov{ Cxhi = Var{p~. ~ } fUr 0 < i ::; n P2y

{ Var{p"'i . 1/J} fUr n < i ::; 2n Yv =

(17)

The products Var{p7 . "j;} can be expanded to: C~ = [-1 -1 ... -1 -1]
(23)
Var{pO '
.. 1/J}
,
= u Pi2 .",
0 .
The determination of the covariance matrix of the
2 2 2
= U 0 • u, + p.0 2
. u· + 1/J. 2 . U 20 observer error has to be carried out similar to
Pi '" '''' Pi eq.16:
(18)
Ev = Cov{e v} = Cov{Yv}
In general, the covariance matrix Cov{y} can be = Cov{v~} + Cov{p~"j;} + Cov{v~o}
expressed by
= Y l - u~FI + Cov{p~"j;} + Cov{v wo }
(19)
(24)
where Y 1 is the covariance matrix of v~ + v and F
with
Y s is the covariance matrix of v~. Since the mea-
surement errors of v~ and v~ can approximately
considered to be uncorrelated, the submatrix Y 2 [~ ~]
1- - . ... ' . (25)
disappears. Thus, the submatrices of Cov{y} are: 1 ... 1

The estimation of vF(k) using "j;(k) and the cur-

rent measurement data is divided into four steps:
• update of Cov{Cx} in eq. 17 with the new
estimation "j; (k )
• determining Yv using v Wo (eq. 23)
• forming the corresponding covariance matrix
E v (eq. 24)
• applying eq. 10 and eq. 12 for estimating
vF(k) and u~F(k)
Referring to eq. 16, 17 and 20 the covariance
matrix E of the observer error e is obtained by: IT necessary, the estimation of v F and "j; can be
repeated iteratively until the changes of these
E = Cov{e} = [:~ ::] + Cov{v WO } (21) quantities fall below a certain lower bound.
The estimation described above is performed in
where the submatrices are every measurement cycle and is currently being

453
tested. It uses sensor information about the vehi-
cle environment which is primary used for plan-
ning driving maneuvers in order to increase the
confidence of the velocity and the angular yaw
velocity of the vehicle. The vehicle environment is
not observed over a period of time, i.e. no object
tracking information is used. This is the task of
another module (fig. 4).
4. LATERAL CONTROL OF AN
AUTONOMOUS VEHICLE
4.1 Overview
The control of the lateral movement of au-
tonomous road vehicles has been subject to in-
tense research over the last decades. Most of the
studies were focused on the steering of highway
vehicles, where a smooth road surface and curves
with large radii are to be expected. The vehicles
were supposed to drive at speeds up to 100 kph.
In this section the lateral control module of an au-
tomated vehicle is described, which was developed
to drive on a special durability test track. There,
the road surface varies from rough asphalt over
humps to deep potholes, the radii of the curves
reach minimum values of 10 meters and the road
is only about 4 meters wide. The vehicles drive at
changing velocities between 15 to 60 kph.
The objective of the lateral control module is to
ensure an accurate tracking performance along the
desired path despite the narrow curves and the
different adhesion conditions of the test track and
the varying velocity.
The desired motion of the vehicle, consisting of
the desired path and velocity, is provided by the
motion planning module desribed in (Simon and
Becker, 1999). This concept differs from most of
the other projects dealing with automated vehicle
guidance, where the vehicles are driven based on
relative information. The relative information is
usually derived by a vision or magnetic sensor
which follows the lane markers. In this project, the
absolute position and orientation of the vehicle
are measured by a very precise navigation system,
fusing information from a DGPS-sensor and an
inertial platform. The lateral tracking error is then
calculated as a distance between the desired path
and the measured position, and the control task is
to minimize this error. In the following subsections
a linear and a nonlinear control schemes will be
introduced and simulation and practical results
will be presented.
454
4.2 LQG / H 2 -Control
The H 2 -design was chosen, as it proved in simula-
tions to reject disturbances better than a PIDT2 -
controller and to react faster than a Hoc-optimal
controller. The control design concept presented
here differs in details from the concept in (Sohnitz
and Schwarze, 1999). In addition to the lateral
error between desired and driven path the yaw
rate was used as a second measurement input to
improve the accuracy of the estimation of the state
variables. And the weighting functions were mod-
ified to achieve integral control behaviour directly
from the 2-norm optimal design process, so that
a second, suboptimal design could be neglected.
The vehicle's lateral dynamics G can be expressed
in state space form as a 3-dof fifth order linear
model (see eq. (26) on the next page), where
the input u is the steering angle, the external
disturbance z is the curvature of the desired path
and the output y contains the lateral tracking
error elat and the yaw rate ~. The state variables
are
X = [.8, 'l/J,. 8, elt, elat] T , (27)
where .8 is the side slip angle, ~ is the yaw rate, 8
is the angle at the front wheels and e lt describes
the error between the vehicle's course angle and
the course angle of the road. The velocity v
is not included in the state variables, but is
regarded as one of the model parameters instead.
This is possible because the velocity changes only
slightly compared to the lateral dynamics. The
other model parameters are the mass rn, the yaw
moment of inertia J zz , the cornering stiffnesses
of the front and rear wheels C// r , the distances
between the center of gravity and the front and
rear axle If/r, the gain Vat and the time constant
Tat of the steering actuator and the air resistance
factor L.
Eq. (26) can be separated into the system G u
x = Ax+ buu (28)
y=Cx,
to design the feeback control law and the system
Gz
x= Ax + bzz
(29)
y= Cx,
to find a feedforward control to improve the track-
ing performance. Based on this model a 2-norm
optimal controller KH2 guaranteeing steady-state
accuracy can be designed. Therefore, the function
h2syn() from MATLAB's p-Analysis and Synthe-
sis Toolbox is applied to the interconnected sys-
tem G H2 shown in fig. 6. The system consists of
the plant G u and the weighting functions W u and
W y . The function h2syn() calculates a controller
 Lu 2 - (cf + c~) c~l~ - cflf
-1 !:.!..- o 0
mu m~2 mu

[~]
c~I~-cflf c~lr + cfl} cflf
o0
Ju Juu
:it = J'f (26)
0 0 - - 00 x+ [ { ;]
T. t
Lu 2 - (cf + cr ) crlr - cfl f _!:.!..- o 0
mu mu 2 mu
0 0 0 u 0

y= [00001]
01000' x

- - - 15tdesign
2nd design
- )rddesign

8.8

Fig. 6. LFT on KH2

r::p..: §:d
*-180
1f-200
....
.cc
----___
---- _
....

K H2 which stabilizes the system G H2 and mini- -228.8 i 2 - 3

mizes the 2-norm of the closed-loop transfer func- Frequency in radls
tion from input [du, dml to output [vu, Vy]. The
2-norm optimal control law is (Doyle et al., 1989) Fig. 7. Bode plot of KH2G u

i = (A + BF + Le) i

~]
- L y (30)

~:I ~
10 .' .
u = Fi, (31)
where i is the estimated state vector and where
..
F and L correspond to the solutions of the Con- 10-1 10' 10' 10'
troller and Filter Algebraic Riccati Equation, re-
spectively. The resulting closed loop system con- ..
-8
O------~
- -. lstdesian
2nd design
sisting of K H2 and GH2 can be presented in linear .5-100
- 3rddesi

fractional transformation (LFT) form, as shown in

fig. 6. *
if -200
_300L_ _~.,--_ _ ======:::J
I~' It I~ 10'
The first order weighting function W y is used to Frequency in radls
achieve integral behaviour of the controller.
Fig. 8. Bode plot of KH2(l + K H2 G u )-l
W = ~ (32)
y s +Pw input of elat to the according outputs. After de-
This is done by placing the real pole -Pw of W II
very close to the imaginary axis, demanding a e 2 - _. Istduign
2nd dezjgn
.5 15
ls . - 3rddesi
very high gain of the controller at low frequencies. ,El
(Choosing a pole directly at zero would not yield :J 0.5
any result as no controller could stabilize this pole 0
0 4 10 12
outside of the closed loop.) The gain w y and the

:
!':~~/
scalar weighting function W u can be used to mod-
ify the overall performance of the controller, where
a compromise between a fast tracking and an ef-
fective disturbance rejection has to be made. The I
results of the design iterations for a Volkswagen -<l.5 2 4--~6-~--1~0----,12
0
Time in s
Caravelle at an operating velocity of 10 kph can be
seen in fig. 7 to 9. The controller derived from the Fig. 9. Closed loop step response
last design process shows good tracking dynamics
(fig. 9) while having the best phase margin of signing KH2, the controller's robust stability and
about 30° (fig. 7) and promising satisfying distur- performance can be ensured by investigating the
bance rejection (8). The step and the frequency Structured Singular Value (SSV) of the system M
responses were all calculated from the reference (see fig. 10). The nominal system G u is perturbed

455

~p f---m-r
kO
Fig. 10. Block structure to analyze the perfor-
mance robustness
by parameter uncertainties, resulting in the ex-
tended system G up • The change in the parameters
can be introduced into the closed loop by the
bounded perturbation matrix a u ' Additionally,
the performance criteria can be expressed by the
weighting functions W k and Wm. The inverse of
W k is used to normalize the maximum amplitude
of the steering angle to 1. The bode plot of the
gain of W k- 1 is shown in fig. 11. The measurement
:s:
~'i
10'3 10" 10"
Frequency in radls
Fig. 11. Bode plot of W k-
noise m was normalized to a maximum amplitude
of 10 cm by choosing W m = 0.1.
The uncertain parameters of the linear model are
the cornering stiffness of the front and rear wheels ,
the vehicles mass and its yaw moment of inertia.
The other parameters can be measured exactly
and do not change. As a change in the vehicle's
mass results in simultaneous changes of all the
other uncertain parameters, their corresponding
perturbations are coupled. The uncertain param-
eters are supposed to change in a range of ±30%
around their nominal values, which is a very pes-
simistic assumption. Fig. 12 shows the result of
a robust stability analysis of the system M, i.e.
the robust performance analysis of the closed loop
control system. What can be seen are the upper
and lower bound of the SSV of M. As the SSV is
0.8
::~'::
"" ::
02 :. ~'
,t';. t :
o
: \,,"_,: t.
., .... !
. .',.:
10- 1 100
Frequency in radls
Fig. 12. Bounds of the SSV for robust performance
far smaller than the margin of 1 the robust sta-
bility and performance of the closed loop system
are ensured for all possible parameter changes.
To adjust the controller to the changing velocity,
the gain scheduling method was chosen. There-
fore, the design process had to be repeated for
different operating points between standstill and
o- - - - '
60 kph.
The curvature of the desired path z is regarded
as an external disturbance, which can be seen
from eq. (26). A curvature compensation filter F z
can be formed by inverting the transfer function
between the steering angle u and the curvature
of the vehicle's path ,j,~P. As the filter generates
dynamic steering signals, better tracking results
are expected than attained by the commonly used
steady state feedforward loops. The curvature
compensation filter is also adapted to the velocity
using gain scheduling. Fig. 13 shows the resulting
lateral control scheme which is based on the linear
model of the lateral vehicle dynamics.
lo° 10'
!
10'
1
Fig. 13. Block diagram of the linear lateral control
scheme
4.3 Input-Output Linearization
The second control concept, which was expected
to improve the tracking performance compared
to the linear controller, is based on an affine,
nonlinear model of the longitudinal and lateral
vehicle dynamics (see eq. (34) on the next page).
A newly introduced magnitude is the force in
longitudinal direction at the front wheels Fx/ ,
which accelerates or decelerates the vehicle. The
force at the rear wheels was assumed to be zero, to
simplify the differential equations. FXf is regarded
as a second disturbance input, in addition to
z. Model (34) can be input-output linearized by
applying the nonlinear state-feedback algorithm
described in (Isidori, 1995). The model equations
can be written in general form
x = a(x) + b(x)u (34)
y = c(x) = elat
:',
The linearizing control law is
:.: :
': ':
::::
I.,.... ~ ~
u = u· - L~ c(x)
(35)
10 1 LbL~ c(x) ,
which implies that the system is ofrelative degree
3. The L~ are the i - th Lie derivative along a and
456
 . F 0-{3 L cf 0 cf+cr {3 crlr-Cflf ,p
-t/J + - zf - - + - v{3 +- - - - - - + ------'-..:...
m V m mv m ¥ 2m V2
I!Fzf + cflf
~---'--_~ 0 + c~l~ - cflf {3 -
c~lr + cfl f ,p- 0
J.. J'f J.. v 0
Vd
--0
T.t + T.t ·u (33)
,p
I.!.] F z ! 0 - {3
v z - -
m
L cf 0
- - - - v{3 - - -
v m mv
ve K
cf+ Cr {3
+ -- - -
m v
c~l~ - cflf
---=-~
m v2
0
0
0
F Zf _!:- v2 +2 cf 0{3 _ cf +c r {32 _ Ct 02 + Crl~ -Cflf ,pf3 + Ct'f ,po
m m m m m m v mv

u· = 'e'lat is the input to the linearized system,
which behaves like three chained integrators (see
fig. 14). The input u· can now be generated by
a linear control law which can be found easily
for the integrator system. To ensure steady-state
accuracy a fourth state is introduced, as can be
seen in fig. 14. The inner states of the linearized
angle at the front wheels 8. They are estimated
by an Extended Kalman Filter.
4.4 Simulation and Practical Results
Fig. 15 and 16 show the simulated and the prac-
tical results for a worst case driving manoeuver
with a Volkswagen Caravelle on a test track. The
curves reach minimum radii of 10 rn, so that
steering angles of more than one revolution (611")
are necessary to keep the track. The resulting

Fig. 14. Block diagrams of the nonlinear lateral

control scheme and its linear equivalent
system are Fig. 15. Results for the LQG j H 2 -controller
elat = L~ c(x) and €lat = L~ c(x).
It can be noticed that, in contrary to the linear
controller, the influence of z and v on the lat- ~,:~
-:.3 0 ...... _ ~ I", .. _,,,'
I \ \ _ - -",

eral dynamics are automatically taken into ac- -0.5 ','

count for the steering command. To apply the

input-output linearization the full state vector
.
X = (.8,1/1,8, e", elat, v]
T .
and the dlstrubances z
..
e3
co'
·;-3~
o

-6
~
'
5 10

\
15

"
20

'. •
25 30

'
35

and F:z:f need to be determined. The following o 5 10 15 20 25 30 35

~:~-$i
magnitudes are measured in the test vehicle: "j;,
elat and v. Apart from that, the acceleration V:z:
4 --- Ex mefU
in the vehicle's longitudinal direction is provided o 5 10 15 20 25 30 35
by the inertial sensor system, so that F:xf can be TImeins
calculated by the simplified relation
Fig. 16. Results for the IjO-linearizing controller
F:z:f = rn v:z:.
The curvature of the desired path z is provided course of the desired and the driven path from
by the motion planning module, as described the practical tests can be seen in fig. 17 and
before. The error of the course angles e" can be 18. Fig. 19 shows the curvature of the desired
determined by integrating path. The control concepts have obviously both
advantages as well as disadvantages. While the
€" = v z -"j; -~' IjO-linearizing controller achieves a better track-
Hence, the only magnitudes which can not be ing accuracy it produces a more nervous steering
derived directly are the side slip angle .8 and the signal which results in increased yaw movements

457
 160r-=:------------, 5. CONCLUSIONS
140

120 In this paper the navigation and control systems

of an autonomous vehicle have been presented.
A sensor fusion module processes the data of the
60 heterogenous object-detecting sensors, which were
40 developed for collision avoidance purposes. The
20 -OeaircdPam
proposed navigation concept uses this data for
---Drivenl'l:b
00 10 I~ 20 25 30 3~ 40
the enhancement of the estimation of the vehicle
X.t. inm ego-position. This position is one of the measure-
ment inputs to the lateral control module, which
Fig. 17. Path in absolute coordinates (LQG I H 2 ) is designed as a tracking control system. Two
1.0·,-------------, control concepts have been introduced. The linear
system proved to be more robust and achieved a
better disturbance rejection while the nonlinear
E
100 controller reacted faster and more accurate.
c

so
6. ACKNOWLEDGMENT
- [)e5ucdPillh
--·Drive.nPatb The authors would like to thank the Ministry
00 10 I~ 20 2~ 30 35 40
X.bsinm of Economics, Technology and Transport of the
State of Lower Saxony, the Volkswagen AG and
Fig. 18. Path in absolute coordinates (I/O-lin.) the Robert Bosch GmbH for supporting this work.

-"'~
I
E 0.05
c
.- 0
~ -0.05
U
" -0.1
o 5 10 15 20
Time in s
Fig. 19. Curvature of the desired path z
of the vehicle. Its disturbance rejection is quite
poor, while the LQG I H 2-controller can cope with
very noisy sensor signals. The passanger comfort
is definitely higher with the LQG I H 2 -controller.
In both cases, the lateral errors elat seem to have
undesirably high values of up to 0.8 m. But it
needs to be taken into account, that the curves
are extraordinary narrow and that the curvature
of the desired path does not exactly correspond to
the path itself. The path is much smoother than
one might expect from the curvature in fig. 19, but
the curvature is used as an input to the controller
and causes most of the steering activities. Apart
from that, the signal delays originated by the
data transmission between the sensors, the motion
planning module, the control unit and the robot
driver were not considered when designing the
controllers. This should be done in the future to
increase the accuracy. To improve the disturbance
rejection of the I/O-linearizing control law it can
be useful to replace the Extended Kalman Filter
by a Linear Kalman Filter, which would improve
the filter robustness. In summary, one can say that
both control concepts are suited for the practi-
cal application. Only, the LQG I H 2 -controller is
preferable to the I/O-linearizing control concept
as long as no robust behaviour can be ensured for
the latter.
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