Real-Time Trail-Braking Maneuver Generation for Off-Road Vehicle Racing

Abstract

Trail braking is a high-speed cornering technique that can, typically, be performed only by an expert driver. In this paper, we first learn a primitive high-speed cornering maneuver using a series of demonstrations obtained by solving the minimum-time cornering problem subject to different initial conditions. This primitive trajectory indicates that a typical trail-braking maneuver can be approximated by three segments, namely, entry corner guiding, steady-state sliding, and straight-line exiting. Based on this result, we divide a trail-braking maneuver into three stages. The middle sliding stage includes a segment of steady-state cornering that can be utilized to generate such trajectories for a variety of corner geometries. A flatness-based tracking controller is designed to generate the entry corner trajectory, and a feedback control stabilizes the vehicle at the exit.