Road-map assisted standoff tracking of moving ground vehicle using nonlinear model predictive control

This paper presents road-map–assisted standoff tracking of a ground vehicle using nonlinear model predictive control. In model predictive control, since the prediction of target movement plays an important role in tracking performance, this paper focuses on utilizing road-map information to enhance the estimation accuracy. For this, a practical road approximation algorithm is first proposed using constant curvature segments, and then nonlinear road-constrained Kalman filtering is followed. To address nonlinearity from road constraints and provide good estimation performance, both an extended Kalman filter and unscented Kalman filter are implemented along with the state-vector fusion technique for cooperative unmanned aerial vehicles. Lastly, nonlinear model predictive control standoff tracking guidance is given. To verify the feasibility and benefits of the proposed approach, numerical simulations are performed using realistic car trajectory data in city traffic.