Tangent vector field approach for curved path following with input saturation

Path following is an indispensable function for autonomous vehicles. Desired paths may be of arbitrary shape, not just the mostly investigated straight lines and circles. This paper addresses the path following problem of arbitrary twice differentiable curves using vector-field-based approach. A tangent vector field is constructed through coordinate transformation, and a sufficient condition for its feasibility concerning the input saturation is given out. A saturated turning velocity controller is designed and its Lyapunov stability is discussed in detail. Numerical simulation results show us that the path following performance of the proposed approach is comparable with that of the literature while involving 5 less parameters to be set.