This book provides methodologies for designing and implementing guidance algorithms for autonomous vehicles. These algorithms make important decision regarding how to steer and drive a ground vehicle in order to safely stay on an intended path, thereby making the vehicle driverless. The design tools provided in this book enable the reader to develop highly practical and real-world implementable guidance algorithms that will deliver high-accuracy driving for field vehicles. (They are equally applicable for on-road vehicles.) The book covers a variety of vehicle types, including wheeled vehicles, tracked vehicles, wheeled and tracked vehicles towing trailers, and four-wheel-steer and four-wheel-drive vehicles. It also covers active trailers that are driven and steered. Vehicles used in agriculture, mining and road construction are subjected to unpredictable and significant disturbances. The robust control methodologies presented can successfully compensatefor these disturbances, as confirmed by the experimental results presented. Though the majority of the methodologies presented are based on sliding-mode controllers, other robust control methodologies are also discussed. To help the reader decide which controller is best suited for his/her choice of vehicle, experimental results are presented in a comparative format.

Offers a collection of robust applied off-road vehicle guidance methodologies for all forms of ground vehicles currently in use Provides substantial theoretical improvements on novel vehicle guidance methodologies, which have been implemented in field vehicles, and experimentally verifies their benefits Presents software architectures that allow the reader to implement the methodologies on Linux or Windows operating systems

Inhalt
Introduction.- Modelling Vehicle Systems.- Offset Models of Vehicles.- Design of Controllers.- Implementation of Controllers.- Conclusion.