Stability analysis of a digital hierarchical steering controller of autonomous vehicles with multiple time delays

Abstract

This study investigates the lane-keeping control of autonomous vehicles with an emphasis on the digital delayed nature of the system. The vehicle dynamics are represented using a kinematic bicycle model, and a hierarchical lane-keeping controller is introduced with multiple delays in the feedback loop. An extension of the semidiscretization method is presented, in order to perform the stability analysis of the digitally controlled vehicle with multiple discrete time delays. The differences between the continuous approximation and the exact consideration of discrete time delays are highlighted. We show that in certain cases, neglecting the effects of quantization can lead to significant inaccuracies, especially when tuning the lower-level controller. The results are verified using a series of small-scale laboratory experiments.