Path following with reduced off-tracking for multibody wheeled vehicles

Our purpose is to provide a formulation of the path following problem for multibody kinematic wheeled vehicles aiming to keep the whole vehicle at a reduced distance from a given path, i.e., to reduce the off-tracking distance of the vehicle from the path. In the proposed setting, the stabilization problem for paths of constant curvature is locally solvable by a simple linear feedback law. In order to quantify how much cumbersome a vehicle is along a given path, we provide two different estimates of the off-tracking bound, i.e., of the minimal clearance that has to be left around the path in order for the vehicle to pass through in a case of perfect tracking. Experimental results on a miniature multibody vehicle are reported.