Method and apparatus for smooth control of a vehicle with automatic recovery for interference
AssigneeNorth American Philips Corporation
InventorsKaren Irene Trovato, Leendert Dorst
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Abstract
In order to provide smooth control a vehicle control method includes concatenating like-kind direction arrows in a configuration space. In addition, a stopping criterion is used to change a control signal in time to achieve stopping at a desired setpoint. To improve error recovery, control signals are changed in response to an error exceeding a predetermined limit.
Claims15
A method of controlling a vehicle comprising the steps of
- starting from a stored configuration space representation of an environment of the vehicle, which stored configuration space representation includes a plurality of stored direction arrows defining paths to a goal, which direction arrows are selected from a neighborhood of direction arrows in which some arrows of the neighborhood are of like-kind with each other and some arrows of the neighborhood are of different kind;
- concatenating a plurality of like-kind direction arrows in the configuration space to specify a single motion, which is longer than individual motions specified by any of the concatenated like-kind direction arrows, to pose corresponding to a target setpoint;
- and
- controlling the vehicle to reach the pose corresponding to the target setpoint, without separately specifying the individual motions.
A method of controlling a vehicle comprising the steps of, during motion of a vehicle under control of control signals:
- transmitting a stopping setpoint of the vehicle as the control signals, which stopping setpoint corresponds to the desired stopping pose;
- computing a stopping criterion for the vehicle based on the stopping setpoint, which stopping criterion is the vehicle intersecting a geometrical element, which geometrical element extends for a non-zero distance in at least one dimension;
- sensing a sensed pose of the vehicle when the vehicle meets the stopping criterion;
- and
- changing the control signals in response to the sensed pose of the vehicle, so that the vehicle moves to the desired stopping pose.
A method of controlling a vehicle for automatic error recovery comprising the following steps, during motion of the vehicle under control of control signals:
- maintaining a stored configuration space representation of an environment of the vehicle, which representation includes a plurality of states and a direction arrow value for each state, the direction arrow values pointing to a desired goal;
- sensing a parameter of the vehicle;
- setting limits defining an acceptable range of error in the sensed parameter of the vehicle;
- monitoring the error;
- if the error exceeds the limits, revising an estimation of a current state of the vehicle in the configuration space representation and transmitting a changed control signal based on the revised estimation.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.