Adaptive preview control of single-point path tracker for car-like delivery service robot

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to design a simple and intuitive path tracker to minimise the distance error of a car-like delivery service robot using only a position sensor, i.e. global positioning system in outdoor environments. The authors proposed not only a single-point preview path tracker (SPP), but also a curvature-based preview control using a quadratic curve fitting technique. This method can provide flexibility in preview distance control even at a constant speed, and reduces the burden of an actuator for maintenance. Furthermore, the performance of the proposed adaptive SPP is considerably improved compared to that when using a fixed preview distance.