Acceleration, Braking, and Steering Controller for Polaris GEM e2
Abstract
This paper discusses the design and simulation of lane keeping and velocity controllers for a Polaris GEM e2. The controllers were designed to be implemented in
Florida Institute of Technology’s entry for the Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition self-drive challenge. The software and physical implementation of actuators
were included to control the acceleration, braking, and steering. The accelerator
pedal was replaced with a set of digitally controlled potentiometers, the brake
pedal was replaced with a linear actuator, and the steering column was replaced
with a stepper motor. Each actuator was controlled by a Raspberry Pi 3. A sliding mode controller was designed and its performance was evaluated against a PID
controller for lane keeping. The sliding mode controller had a consistently smaller
lateral error, especially during changes to the radius of the curve. Velocity control
was simulated using a derived dynamic model for the longitudinal motion of the
car. An adaptive control method was designed for velocity control and compared
to PID. The adaptive control method reduced the error in longitudinal position
during both acceleration and deceleration.