Adaptive robust path tracking control for autonomous vehicles with measurement noise

In practical autonomous vehicle systems, model uncertainty and measurement noise are two challenging factors that deteriorate path tracking accuracy and system stability. This article proposes an adaptive robust controller to deal with these two factors and enhance path tracking accuracy. First, the path tracking model considering time-varying uncertainty is built and represented as nominal and uncertain portions. Second, the control law is designed separately for both portions. A linear quadratic regulator controller is utilized to stabilize the nominal system. An additional robust control law is proposed to suppress the matched uncertainty and measurement noise, with an adaptive scheme aimed at estimating the bound outside uncertainty. The path tracking system with the developed control law is proved to possess uniform boundedness, uniform ultimate boundedness properties, and robustness against mismatched uncertainty. Eventually, the effectiveness of the developed controller is validated using both MATLAB/Simulink-TruckSim co-simulation and an autonomous vehicle platform. The results demonstrate that the designed adaptive robust control can achieve accurate path tracking in the presence of time-varying uncertainty and measurement noise.