Lateral control for autonomous wheeled vehicles: A technical review

Abstract

Autonomous driving has the ability to reshape mobility and transportation by reducing road accidents, traffic jams, and air pollution. This can yield energy efficiency, convenience, and more productivity as significant driving time will be gained and used in other activities instead. Autonomous vehicles are complex systems consisting of several modules that perform perception, decision-making, planning, and control. Control is essential for achieving automatic driving; it is basically divided into longitudinal control that handles speed tracking and lateral control which ensures accurate steering. The latter is primordial in path tracking applications and recent research has witnessed a huge leap in this field. The aim of this paper is to provide a technical survey of the latest research on the lateral control of autonomous vehicles as well as to highlight technical challenges and limits for further developments.