This research study presents two control solutions, PID and the novel hyper-clothoid control strategy, to autonomously navigate a car. These waypoint navigation solutions smoothly connect the given waypoints with C1 continuity using Hermite cubic splines which is used as a reference path for the controller to track. The PID controller uses lateral and heading error to generate a steering profile for the vehicle to track the constructed reference path. A novel real time solution is presented as the second control strategy which involves constructing clothoids to generate a steering profile. The resultant car trajectory preserves curvature and curvature rate continuity.

A simulation test bench was developed in MATLAB and Simulink. Six benchmark waypoint datasets have been used for regression testing and validating the algorithms. Both the proposed control strategies have been implemented on a 2017 GM Chevy Bolt EV. A real time operating system (QNX) has been used and was time-synced with the localization suite in the test vehicle. Closed loop results with accuracies up to 50 cm of lateral error have been achieved using the test vehicle.