Passive actuator-fault-tolerant path following control of autonomous ground electric vehicle with in-wheel motors

Abstract

This paper investigates the fault-tolerant path following control problem of autonomous ground electric vehicles with in-wheel motors through hierarchical control strategy. The sliding mode observer with boundary layer is designed to estimate the vehicle state, and the time-delay estimation method is used to compute the actuator fault. Considering the actuator fault, the fault-tolerant path following control strategy is proposed, in which the upper layer controller is developed to achieve path following control and guarantee vehicle stability simultaneously by sliding mode control method, and the lower layer controller is presented to achieve the control efforts of upper layer controller by adaptive orientated tire force allocation method. The simulations are implemented in the CarSim-Simulink co-simulation platform, and the simulation results have verified the effectiveness of proposed fault-tolerant path following control method.