  This paper investigates the lateral control problem in vehicular
path-following when the feedback sensor(s) are mounted at an arbitrary location
in the longitudinal symmetric axis. We point out that some existing literature
has abused the kinematic bicycle model describing the motion of rear axle
center for other locations, which may lead to poor performance in practical
implementations. A new nonlinear controller with low-complexity and
high-maneuverability is then designed that takes into account senor mounting
location, driving comfort and transient response with large initial errors.
Design insights and intuitions are also provided in detail. Furthermore,
analysis on stability and tracking performance for the closed-loop system are
studied, and conditions and guidelines are provided on the selection of control
parameters. Comprehensive simulations are performed to demonstrate the efficacy
of the proposed nonlinear controller for arbitrary sensor locations. Meanwhile,
we also show that designing controllers ignoring the sensor location may lead
to unexpected vehicular sway motion in non-straight paths.
