Extended Look-Ahead Tracking Controller with Orientation-Error Observer for Vehicle Platooning

This paper presents a novel extended look-ahead concept of an integrated lateral and longitudinal vehicle following controller with an orientation-error observer. The control law is based on input-output feedback to address a local tracking problem. It is known that due to the position control in the look-ahead approach, the follower vehicle may cut corners. To address this problem, a reference-induced extended look-ahead tracking point is introduced such that the cutting-corner is compensated. Moreover, the stability of the internal dynamics is analyzed. To address the situation where the orientation tracking error is not measurable or corrupted by noise, an orientation-error observer, constructed from the position tracking error, is designed. The performance of the extended look-ahead controller and the orientation-error observer is investigated by means of a simulation study, and validated with experiments on a mobile robot platform.