Predictive Control for improving vehicle handling and stability

Abstract

In the modern era of automotive industry, Active Front Steering (AFS) control is in hot pursuit due to its increased inbuilt vehicle maneuverability, reduced risk of instability and thereby significant reduction in number of accident occurrences. In this paper, a novel control strategy of Model Predictive Controller (MPC) with robust Optimal Guaranteed Cost Controller (OGCC) is introduced for AFS control. In the proposed scheme, MPC is designed to compensate for the effect of the driver's steering input, modeled as a known disturbance. Thus, providing the optimal solution by satisfying control input constraint. The OGCC controller renders the system robustness to the effect of system uncertainties, while achieving acceptable performance for tracking the desired vehicle trajectory. The complete controller scheme achieves the best results with RMS error < 10−4 and thus whilst guaranteeing the stability of vehicle in the presence of uncertain environment. Numerical simulation results are performed to the effectiveness of the proposed approach over other conventional techniques.