Robotic Implementation of the Adaptive Cruise Control-Comparison of Three Control Methods

Abstract

Abstract. This paper explores the practical implementation of the Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) system on a real-time single board computer based robotic vehicle (National Instruments Robotics Starter Kit). The ACC algorithm based on three control methodologies, the fuzzy PID control, model predictive control (MPC) and conventional PID control, is deployed on a field programmable gate array (FPGA), included in the robot's architecture. The results are compared both in the simulation and using the real robot. The comparison of the performance demonstrates a good correlation between theory and real implementation, whilst highlighting problems introduced by a real system. IntroductionAdaptive cruise control (ACC) system, cruise control (CC) system and emergency stop are the more common longitudinal applications, which have been studied in the field of the robotics and intelligent transportation system (ITS) [1]. The ACC system is an extension of the cruise control system, which not only controls the velocity of the vehicle but also is it capable of controlling the distance between the leader and follower vehicles to retain a safe distance. A comprehensive study on the ACC was carried out by [2]. Several model-based control approaches and architectures have been suggested and developed for designing ACC systems from the classical to the nonlinear advanced control methods, such as PID control and linear quadratic control (LQC) taking the gain scheduling approach [3][4], model predictive control (MPC) and nonlinear MPC (NMPC) [5][6], and the sliding mode controller [7] among others. The practical implementation of the ACC system using the three control methodologies, MPC, fuzzy PID, and conventional PID control, in the application to the real-time single board computer based robotic vehicle is presented in this paper. Furthermore, the results of those controllers are compared both in the simulation and using the real robot. The paper is organized as follows: Section 2 describes the hardware and the associated system transfer function. Section 3 describes the ACC