Trajectory planning and following in urban environments: To reduce traffic accidents involving vulnerable road users

This thesis presents a comprehensive approach to integrating a trajectory planner and follower for autonomous vehicles (AVs) using model predictive contouring control (MPCC). The planner generates collision-free trajectories with a kinematic bicycle model, while the follower tracks them using a dynamic bicycle model with a smaller integration...

Optimization based 2D platoon control with multiple behaviors implemented through a finite state machine

With inland transportation increasing every passing day, vehicle platooning offers a good solution towards travelling more efficiently. Along with reducing traffic congestion on roads, platooning also leads to better fuel consumption among vehicles, fewer accidents, and most importantly, vehicle platoons can be made autonomous using optimization...

Active Safety Control for Semi-Autonomous Teleoperated Road Vehicle

The progress in technology has made vehicles safer and the quest to make them even more safe is never ending. Autonomous cars present the solution to make cars much more safer by eliminating the primary cause of road accidents, human error. However, autonomous cars tend to fail in decision making especially in complex traffic environment...

Cooperative r-Passivity-Based Control: Development of a Multi-Agent Passivity-Based Control Scheme with Robustness towards Network Effects

In this work we consider the problem of cooperative formation control between heterogeneous agents when time-varying delays and/or packet loss are present. Specifically, we introduce a control law for nonlinear fully actuated mechanical agents that separates the cooperative coordinates from the local coordinates, which removes the necessity for...

Network Decentralized Collision Avoidance with Applications in a Scalable Unmanned Aerial System Testbed

Decentralized control and estimation are both active research areas in the field of systems and control. A new approach to these topics utilizes graph theory to characterize inter-agent communication as a graph that, in this thesis, can have time-varying topology. This approach has been named "network-decentralized" and the use of network...

Model Predictive Control for Automated Driving and Collision Avoidance: Design of an integrated NMPC with simultaneous lateral and longitudinal control via steering and braking

The automotive sector has seen a rapid transition towards autonomous driving with an aim to achieve SAE Level 5 vehicle. The incessant drive for innovation has resulted in modern passenger cars equipped with plethora of control technologies such as ABS, VSC, AFS via EPS assist etc. all working respectively in various critical and non-critical...

Decentralized Collision Avoidance of Multi-Agent Systems in 3-Dimensional Space

Multi-Agent Systems, often referred to a network of loosely connected autonomous units, are widely used to model the dynamics of crowds, vehicles, robots and swarms in traffic management, biological environment, distributed control and communication technologies. Recently, the study of multi-agent systems is rapidly growing due to the beneficial...

Trajectory Optimization for Autonomous Navigation in Dynamic Environments

Motion planning for Autonomous Ground Vehicles (AGVs) in dynamic environments is an extensively studied and complex problem. State of the art methods provide approximate solutions that make conservative assumptions to provide safety and feasibility. We aim to outperform current methods by following a trajectory optimization-based approach,...

Network-Decentralized Control with Collision Avoidance for Multi-Agent Systems

An often preferred method to control a multi-agent system is by a network-decentralised controller. Network-decentralised means that each agent only has knowledge about its own state and the state of its neighbouring agents. In this thesis the multi-agent system consists of holonomic robots moving in a 2-dimensional configuration space. Each...

Online Trajectory Planning and Control of a MAV Payload System in Dynamic Environments: A Non-Linear Model Predictive Control Approach

Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) are increasingly being used for aerial transportation in remote and urban spaces where portability can be exploited to reach previously inaccessible and inhospitable spaces. Current approaches to MAV swung payload system path planning have primarily focused on pre-generating (agile) collision-free, or conservative...

Tuning of a haptic collision avoidance system for UAV teleoperation: Using neuromuscular admittance measurements

This research investigates a neuromuscular analysis based tuning algorithm for haptic cues that has been hypothesized to simultaneously improve safety and workload when compared to heuristic tuning, applied to a haptic collision avoidance system for unmanned aircraft teleoperation. This novel tuning method considers the combined stiffness of the...