Robust control with uncertain disturbances for vehicle drift motions

Abstract

Professor drivers, including racing drivers, can drive cars to achieve drift motions by taking control of the steering angle in high tire slip ratios, which provides a way to improve the driving safety of autonomous vehicles. The existing studies can be divided into two kinds based on analysis methods, and the theory-based is chosen in this study. Because the recent theory based is most applied for planar models with neglect of the rollover accident risk, the nonlinear vehicle model is established by considering longitudinal, lateral, roll, and yaw motions and rolling safety with the nonlinear tire model UniTire. The drift motion mechanism is analyzed in steady and transient states to obtain drift motion conditions, including the velocity limitation and the relationship between sideslip angle and yaw rate, and vehicle main status parameters including the velocity, side-slip angle and yaw rate in drift conditions. The state-feedback controller is designed based on robust theory and LMI (linear matrix inequation) with uncertain disturbances to realize circle motions in drift conditions. The designed controller in simulations realizes drift circle motions aiming at analyzed status target values by matching the front-wheel steering angle with saturated tire forces, which satisfies the Lyapunov stability with robustness. Robust control in drift conditions solves the problem of how to control vehicles to perform drift motions with uncertain disturbances and improves the driving safety of autonomous vehicles.