Observer-Based Robust Switched LPV Energy-to-Peak Control for Path-Following of Autonomous Ground Vehicles

This paper studies the path-following problem for autonomous ground vehicles (AGVs) where the modeling uncertainties and time-varying velocity are addressed. An observer-based robust switched linear-parameter-varying (LPV) energy-to-peak controller is proposed to improve the closed-loop robustness and path-following performance. Since the lateral velocity is unmeasurable, an observer-based output feedback framework is exploited. To overcome the wide variations of longitudinal velocity, the path-following system is modeled as a switched LPV system that consists of a series of LPV models to facilitate a switched control design. The energy-to-peak performance criterion is adopted to further limit the overshoot of the path-following error. Stability analysis is carried out mainly based on the average dwell time method for switched systems. Simulations and experiments demonstrate that, compared to conventional gain-scheduling methods, the proposed method can enhance path-following accuracy and robustness, especially in scenarios with a large range of varying velocity.