Control of a Mobile Support Platform for Vehicle Detectors on Highway

The California Department of Transportation has sponsored the development of a new family of out of pavement, laser based sensing devices for monitoring road vehicles on the highway. These devices are to be placed over highway traffic lanes, so that they can have an unobstructed view of vehicles moving along the highway. It is expected that there will be need for relatively frequent adjustment of the actual location of these devices over the freeway, so that they can be moved from one lane to another, or so the position over a given lane can be modified. Because of these constraints, a mobile support platform is planned for these devices. This paper presents a motion control strategy for such a mobile platform, and the necessary hardware to implement the control system. The ideas presented in the paper have been tested on a prototype mobile support platform.