Research on Automatic Driving Path Tracking Control of Open-Pit Mine Transportation Vehicles with Delay Compensation
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Figure 4 has too low a resolution. Please, make it high resolution.
In Figure 7, two pictures (a) and (b) look the same. Please distinguish the difference and let the readers understand.
In Figure 9 (a) and (b), the desired and the actual angles look the same. Please distinguish the difference and let the readers understand. If it zooms in at a part, it may be useful.
In Figure 15, two pictures (a) and (b) look the same. Please distinguish the difference and let the readers understand.
In Figure 16 (a) and (b), the desired and the actual angles look the same. Please distinguish the difference and let the readers understand. If it zooms in at a part, it may be useful.
In Figure 19, two pictures (a) and (b) look the same. Please distinguish the difference and let the readers understand.
In Figure 20 (a) and (b), the desired and the actual angles look the same. Please distinguish the difference and let the readers understand. If it zooms in at a part, it may be useful.
In Figure 21, there are Chinese letters. Please, revise it.
Table 3 is confusing. Separate the scenarios and the methods to explain them easily.
Author Response
Dear reviewer
Based on your comments, the article has been revised accordingly.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
ID: wevj-1799171-peer-review-v1
Title: Research on automatic driving path tracking control of open-pit mine transportation vehicles with delay compensation
This paper conducted a simulation comparison study on path tracking methods like pure pursuit control, Stanley control, and Model Predictive Control (MPC). It designed a path tracking control strategy for automatic driving of open-pit mine vehicles based on the MPC algorithm. Finally, this control strategy was verified through actual mining vehicle tests.
I have read the paper once to check its novelty and outcomes. The topic is an interesting one. However, I think authors should better present it as a research paper. This is an essential point to increase the paper attraction. Generally, there are issues that should be resolved.
- Authors should give a better data visualization to illustrate interpretations of data clearly and concisely to an audience. Some figures require modification. Most figures have low resolution. Figures such as Figures 4,5, and 6 show Chinese words when click on them. Also, Figure 6 has Chinese words inside it. Please remove all of them.
Finally, the paper is only large with no clear output. Many figures, 22 figures, are in this paper to explain a critical problem, but I believe that they only over present the contribution that authors have had in this area. Please group figures or remove the ones that are unnecessary.
- Another concern is about the methodologies of the paper. The MPC is one of them, but I think there is not enough discussion about the challenges of its implementation in this paper. Part of the challenge in implementing MPC is that the regulatory control layer is not often a given (or should not be taken as a given). The design problem is really one of deciding on the best overall structure for the regulatory level and MPC, given the control objectives, expected constraints, at least qualitative knowledge of the expected disturbances, and robustness considerations. Similarly, the selection of the controlled variables for MPC is not one of simply deciding which subset of available measurements should be selected.
-I wonder if the results are applicable for underground mines, or it is totally out of scope?
- Other errors:
Page 7: as shown in Figure5-6 --> as shown in Figures 5-6
Page 7: as shown in Figure 7-10 --> as shown in Figures 7-10
…
Author Response
Dear reviewer
Based on your comments, the article has been revised accordingly.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The results show that the MPC controller considering the delay characteristics of system has better control performance than the traditional Stanley control in both simulation and real vehicle test environments.
It is not clear how you selected MPC parameters in Table 2.
The commonly used path tracking methods include pure tracking control [11, 12], Stanley control [13, 14], model predictive control [15- 17] et al. Contributions compared to the-state-of-the-art [11,12,15-17] are not clear to me.
Computational load of your method needs to be compared with that of the-state-of-the-art.
I think the target speed is too slow. What happens when you increase the target speed faster than 20 km/h?
Author Response
Dear reviewer
Based on your comments, the article has been revised accordingly.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
My Comments and Suggestions for the Authors are given below:
The article is carelessly written and needs to be thoroughly revised and edited.
1. The article should be completely reorganized.
2. Briefly describe the method in the abstract.
3. The key contributions need to be highlighted.
4. The research gap is unclear in this manuscript. The literature search is quite inadequate. A larger literature review is needed. Literature research should be done either in the introduction or in a separate section. Separate the “Introduction” section and the “Literature review” sections. Indicate which gap in the literature review guided your work.
5. The first paragraph of the second part is completely off-topic. In the article, there are meaningless expressions that are not related to the topic as follows (page 2, lines 75-83).
6. Are Figure 1 and Figure 2 exactly the same?
7. Figure 4 requires a clear image.
8. There is consistency between the figure texts and the graphics. For example, is it correct to write "wheel angle" in the graphics while "Vehicle steering angle" is written in Figure 9?
9. The graphics are not explained in detail.
10. Figure 12 and figure 13 are exactly the same graphics.
11. Check the inscriptions of the X-axis in Figure 17 b, Figure 18 b, and Figure 21 b.
12. Figure 17 and figure 18 are exactly the same graphics.
13. Explain what the actual test environment is like and how exactly the tests were conducted.
14. Line 271-272-273: Are actual images of the C shape and S shape reference paths available?
15. Describe exactly the method you propose. Explain with block diagrams, if necessary, by drawing an at-a-glance figure.
16. How exactly were the improvements made to the C-shaped and S-shaped roads? Explain in detail using the method you suggested.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear reviewer
Based on your comments, the article has been revised accordingly.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
I have read the paper once more to see if my comments are resolved. Fortunately, the current revision is fine. So, the paper can be accepted as it is.
Reviewer 3 Report
I am satisfied with revision.
Reviewer 4 Report
The authors have made the necessary corrections. However, it seems that it is not an appropriate format to write the “Introduction” section and the “Literature review” sections in separate sections, since a comprehensive literature review was not conducted within the scope of the revision and the introduction section was not expanded as expected. In its current form, writing the introduction only as a short single paragraph is not an appropriate article format.
