Review and performance evaluation of path tracking controllers of autonomous vehicles

Abstract Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) have shown indelible and revolutionary effects on accident reduction and more efficient use of travel time, with outstanding socio‐economic impact. Despite these benefits, to make AVs accepted by a wide demographic and produce them on an industrial scale with a reasonable price, there are still a number of technological and social challenges that need to be tackled. Path Tracking Controller (PTC) of AVs is one of the high potential subsystems that can be further improved in order to achieve more accurate, robust and comfortable tracking performance. This study provides a critical review and simulation study of several selected techniques used for the design of PTC of AVs. The AVs are assumed to have limited controllability due to non‐holonomic constraints, such as car‐like vehicles and differential drive mobile robots. A detailed discussion will be provided on the simulation outcomes as well as the pros and cons of each technique for the sake of implementation and improvement of state‐of‐the‐art PTC