Vehicle Teleoperation: Successive Reference-Pose Tracking

TL;DR

This paper introduces successive reference-pose tracking (SRPT), a novel method for improving vehicle path tracking in teleoperation by transmitting reference poses instead of commands, effectively handling delays and disturbances.

Contribution

The paper proposes SRPT as a new approach to enhance vehicle teleoperation accuracy, demonstrating its feasibility and advantages over traditional Smith predictor control through simulation.

Findings

SRPT significantly improves path tracking accuracy.

SRPT outperforms Smith predictor in delay and disturbance scenarios.

Simulation results confirm robustness of SRPT under various conditions.

Abstract

Vehicle teleoperation is an interesting feature in many fields. A typical problem of teleoperation is communication time delay which, together with actuator saturation and environmental disturbance, can cause a vehicle deviation from the target trajectory imposed by the human operator who imposes to the vehicle a steering wheel angle reference and a speed/acceleration reference. With predictive techniques, time-delay can be accounted at sufficient extent. But, in presence of disturbances, due to the absence of instantaneous haptic and visual feedback, human-operator steering command transmitted to the the vehicle is unaccounted with disturbances observed by the vehicle. To improve reference tracking without losing promptness in driving control, reference trajectory in the form of successive reference poses can be transmitted instead of steering commands to the vehicle. We introduce this new concept, namely, the 'successive reference-pose tracking (SRPT)' to improve path tracking in vehicle teleoperation. This paper discusses feasibility and advantages of this new method, compare to the smith predictor control approach. Simulations are performed in SIMULINK environment, where a 14-dof vehicle model is being controlled with Smith and SRPT controllers in presence of variable network delay. Scenarios for performance comparison are low adhesion ground, strong lateral wind and steer-rate demanding maneuvers. Simulation result shows significant improvement in reference tracking with SRPT approach.