Lateral Control of a Self-driving Bike

Paper in proceeding, 2022

This paper describes the lateral control for trajectory following of a self-driving bike. It is a cascade control structure where an inner loop stabilize the balancing with a simple P-controller and the outer loop is the lateral controller. The lateral controller is linear for small control errors but for larger control errors it is made nonlinear by saturating some of the signals. It is tuned to obtain a fast response but still within an acceptable interaction with the inner stabilizing loop. The design and the tuning of the controller is explained and illustrated with simulation result motivating the design decisions. The presented results are part of a larger project where self-driving bikes are being designed and built to be used as test objects in test drives with other vehicles in development and validation of active safety function in the vehicles.