A Simple and Practical Path Tracking Method for Wheeled Differential Steering Vehicle

At present, the main algorithms used in driverless vehicle path tracking control have some problems, such as difficult parameter adjustment, small adaptability to vehicle speed and so on. Aiming at the problem of path tracking control for wheeled differential steering vehicle, this paper proposes a new yaw rate control algorithm based on PID feedback control strategy. Firstly, the corresponding parameters can be adjusted according to the changes of heading deviation, lateral position deviation and yaw rate deviation in the tracking process. Secondly, the parameter of preview coefficient was introduced to help the vehicle track the curve to realize feedforward control and solve the problem of slow steering response of wheeled differential steering vehicle. Finally, in order to verify the effectiveness of the method, the six wheeled differential steering electric drive experiment vehicle was built. The experiment vehicle used the same set of parameters to complete the stable tracking of the linear target path at three speeds of 20 km/h, 40 km/h and 50 km/h, and the error was well maintained within ± 0.2 m, which showed the excellent adaptability of the algorithm to different speeds in practical application. The experiment vehicle completed the tracking of the target path of the double shift line at the speed of 10 km/h, which verified the applicability of the algorithm to curve path.