Multi-vehicle Path Following using Modified Trajectory Shaping Guidance

TL;DR

This paper introduces a guidance law for multiple vehicles to follow circular paths accurately while maintaining desired spacing, using only the lead vehicle's path information, with proven stability and validated results.

Contribution

It presents a novel virtual target-based guidance law tailored for multi-vehicle path following with stability analysis and experimental validation.

Findings

Effective path following with precise spacing maintained

Proven lateral and longitudinal stability

Validated through simulations and experiments

Abstract

In this paper, we formulate a virtual target-based path following guidance law aimed towards multi-vehicle path following problem. The guidance law is well suited to precisely follow circular paths while minting desired distance between two adjacent vehicles where path information is only available to the lead vehicle. We analytically show lateral and longitudnal stability and convergence on the path. This is also validated through simulation and experimental results.