Coordinated control for path following of two-wheel independently actuated autonomous ground vehicle

摘要

This study investigates the path following control problem about distributed-drive self-driving vehicle through coordinated control of the autonomous front-wheel steering and the differential steering control, to improve the tracking performance. On the basis of the model predictive control algorithm and vehicle dynamic model, the preview time adaptive control of path following is proposed to realise path following with changing preview time in straight and turning conditions. Considering the characteristics of the distributed-drive self-driving vehicle, the differential torque control is utilised based on the reference heading angle to realise trajectory tracking under the condition of constant torque demands. To integrate the advantages of the two methods, coordinated control of trajectory tracking based on the autonomous steering and differential steering is performed by setting the weight coefficients method. MATLAB co-simulation with Carsim and road testing validation are executed, and both demonstrate that the coordinated control strategy can not only effectively improve the response speed and flexibility of steering, but also improve the reliability and accuracy of trajectory tracking.