Comparative Study of Path Tracking Controllers on Low Friction Roads for Autonomous Vehicles

This paper presents a comparison among path tracking controllers on low-friction roads for autonomous vehicles. There are two goals in this paper. The first is to check the performance of path tracking controllers on low-friction roads, and the second is to check the effectiveness of four-wheel steering (4WS) for path tracking. To fully investigate the performance of path-tracking controllers on low-friction roads in this paper, the pure pursuit method, Stanley method, PID control, linear quadratic regulator, sliding mode control and model predictive control are designed and compared in terms of some measures. Front and four-wheel steering are adopted as actuators for path tracking. To utilize 4WS in the pure pursuit method, Stanley method and PID control, a yaw rate tracking control is adopted. With the designed path tracking controllers, a simulation is conducted on vehicle simulation software. From the simulation results, it is shown that most path tracking controllers are effective for path tracking on low-friction roads if finely tuned, and that 4WS is not recommended for path tracking on low-friction roads.