High-speed autonomous navigation system for heavy vehicles

• Published in: Applied soft computing Vol. 43; pp. 572 - 582
• Main Authors: Rodriguez-Castaño, A., Heredia, G., Ollero, A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier B.V 01.06.2016
• Subjects: Autonomous vehicles; Differential GPS; Fuzzy control; Heavy vehicles; Navigation; Sensor data fusion; Differential GPS; Fuzzy control; Navigation; Sensor data fusion; Autonomous vehicles; Heavy vehicles
• ISSN: 1568-4946; 1872-9681
• DOI: 10.1016/j.asoc.2016.02.026

•The paper presents techniques for autonomous path tracking of heavy vehicles at high speeds.•Vehicle state estimation is based on fuzzy logic, and a Takagi–Sugeno type controller is used for vehicle lateral control.•The paper describes the real implementation and testing of the controllers in a real truck.•The implementation of high speed robot controllers for heavy vehicles is more difficult in practice than for small mobile robots.•The paper also describes experiments with the soft controller at high speeds, up to 100km/h. This paper presents techniques for GPS based autonomous navigation of heavy vehicles at high speed. The control system has two main functions: vehicle position estimation and generation of the steering commands for the vehicle to follow a given path autonomously. Position estimation is based on fusion of measurements from a carrier-phase differential GPS system and odometric sensors using fuzzy logic. A Takagi–Sugeno fuzzy controller is used for steering commands generation, to cope with different road geometry and vehicle velocity. The presented system has been implemented in a 13tons truck, and fully tested in very demanding conditions, i.e. high velocity and large curvature variations in paved and unpaved roads.