NMPC-based Controller for Autonomous Vehicles Considering Handling Performance

Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) have shown an evolutionary impact on the transportation systems by providing several benefits in terms of active safety as well as saving travel cost and time. The growing market of the AVs reflects the fact that different aspects of the AVs are still improving to provide a more comfortable and safer environment for the passengers. One of the subsystems which has potential to be improved is the path tracking controller. This subsystem is mainly responsible for the accurate and safe implementation of the trajectories. In this study, a nonlinear path tracking controller is proposed to improve the handling behavior of the AV. To this aim, a Nonlinear Model Predictive Controller (NMPC) is developed to optimise the tracking error and the handling behaviour of the AV. The constrained optimisation problem is solved using a nonlinear programming approach. The outcomes of the study show that adoption of this technique can result in improvement of handling behaviour and passengers comfort while meeting the requirement of an accurate path tracking.