Path Following Control Strategy for Gantry Virtual Track Train

Abstract

This paper proposed a path following control strategy for the newly designed gantry virtual track train (G-VTT), focusing on the lateral control for low-speed turning manoeuvre. A local tracking objective function (LTOF) was proposed to find the optimal lateral acceleration (OLA) of the tracking point in the preview window and calculate optimal wheel steering angle (WSA) to achieve the optimal local trajectory. Considering the lag time <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$T_{\mathrm{d}}$</tex> of the control system, the damping adjustment factor <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$\lambda$</tex> was proposed to optimize the damping characteristics and the time-delay stability factor <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$\xi$</tex> was proposed to evaluate the time-delay stability. The effectiveness of the proposed control strategy was verified by simulation.