Automated Ground Vehicle Path-Following: A Robust Energy-to-Peak Control Approach

• Published in: IEEE transactions on intelligent transportation systems 2022-09, Vol.23 (9), p.14294-14305
• Main Authors: Zhou, Xingyu, Wang, Zejiang, Wang, Junmin
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: <italic xmlns:ali="http://www.niso.org/schemas/ali/1.0/" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">H ∞ control; Automated driving; Automation; Comparative studies; Control methods; Control systems design; Control theory; Controllers; energy-to-peak control; Mathematical models; output feedback; Path tracking; path-following; Robust control; Robust stabilization; Robustness; Safety; Stability criteria; Tracking control; Tracking errors; Uncertainty; Upper bounds; Vehicle dynamics
• ISSN: 1524-9050; 1558-0016
• DOI: 10.1109/TITS.2021.3126467

Due to the simultaneous existence of model uncertainties and external disturbances, designing automated ground vehicle path-following controllers is recognized as a challenging task. The H_{\infty } robust control methodology, as one of the accomplished strategies for controller robustification, has been commonly adopted by researchers to address the vehicle path-tracking problems. Nevertheless, despite its advantages, the H_{\infty } controller is only capable of limiting the total "energy" of the tracking errors. On the other hand, from a safety standpoint, constraining the "peak" of the tracking errors may carry an equal or more importance. To establish a guaranteed upper bound on the path-tracking errors, this paper proposes a novel methodology to synthesis the ground vehicle path-following controller in light of the energy-to-peak robust control theory. Additionally, to address the time-varying uncertainties presented in the tire dynamics, robust stabilization constraints based upon the small-gain theorem are also formulated into the overall controller design problem. Comparative study regarding the disturbance rejection performance between the proposed controller and the conventional H_{\infty } approach is conducted via CarSim-Simulink joint simulations. Furthermore, the robustness and disturbance attenuation ability of the energy-to-peak path-tracking controller is experimentally verified on a scaled car.