Practical Speed Control for an Autonomous Golf Car

One of the most convincing arguments that autonomous vehicles are possible is cruise control. The ability to control the speed of the vehicle is an important feature to transform the vehicle into a self-driving car. This research focuses on a practical design to control the speed of the golf cart aiming to build an autonomous golf cart. An electronic board is designed to communicate with the vehicle controller. A control structure is formulated by a typical feedback control system with the gains adjusted to get the best performance in the real drive. The experimental results show that the proposed control design can successfully provide a smooth ride with the desired speed.