Coupled lateral and longitudinal trajectory tracking control with a modified vehicle kinematics model for autonomous vehicles

Abstract The paper proposes a coupled lateral and longitudinal trajectory tracking control algorithm based on model predictive control (MPC) to enhance the precision and stability of trajectory tracking of autonomous vehicles. The coupled MPC controller is developed based on a modified vehicle kinematics model, which simultaneously takes the steering angle and the longitudinal speed as control variables. The modified vehicle model and the coupled MPC controller are verified by CarSim and MATLAB/Simulink co-simulation experiments. Simulation results demonstrate that, at the cost of 12 percent increase in average computational time, the proposed coupled MPC controller leads to an approximate 48 percent reduction in tracking error compared to the benchmarking coupled lateral and longitudinal MPC controller based on the classic kinematics model.