Unmanned vehicle path following by pursuing a virtual target moving along the path is considered. Limitations for pure pursuit guidance are analyzed while following the virtual target on curved paths. Trajectory shaping guidance is proposed as an alternate guidance scheme for a generalized curvature path and it is proven that the vehicle will have the same instantaneous radius of curvature as that of the virtual target. By linear analysis it is shown that the convergence to the path for trajectory shaping guidance is twice as fast as pure pursuit. Simulations highlight significant improvement in position errors by using trajectory shaping guidance. Comparative simulation studies comply with analytic findings and present better performance as compared to pure pursuit and a non-linear guidance methodology from the literature. Experimental validation supports the analytic and simulations studies as the guidance laws are implemented on a radio controlled car in laboratory environment.
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