Trajectory of Ground Vehicles in Closed Paths using Linear Control Strategies 2008-36-0095

In this paper are presented the preliminary results of a research work that have been done by the PUC-Rio Vehicular Systems Group aiming to establish a methodology to reproduce the ground vehicles control by humans. The vehicle dynamic model, the path conditions and the control strategies are discussed. We are aiming to employ this methodology to optimize the vehicles behavior in several operation conditions and emergency situations, accidents reconstruction and collisions analysis. The main results here concerns to the representation of a closed path and the use of classical and modern control strategies to follow such trajectory, comparing the behaviors of a linear and a nonlinear vehicle dynamic models, with several degrees of freedom, using physical constraints, such as steering angles and lateral acceleration, among others, to define the control elements parameters.