Linear Parameter-Varying Controller Design for Four-Wheel Independently Actuated Electric Ground Vehicles With Active Steering Systems

This paper presents a linear parameter-varying (LPV) control strategy to preserve stability and improve handling of a four-wheel independently actuated electric ground vehicle in spite of in-wheel motors and/or steering system faults. Different types of actuator faults including loss-of-effectiveness fault, additive fault, and the fault makes an actuator´s control effect stuck-at-fixed-level, are considered simultaneously. To attenuate the effects of disturbance and address the challenging problem, a novel fault-tolerant (FT) robust linear quadratic regulator (LQR)-based H_∞ controller using the LPV method is proposed. With the LQR-based H_∞ control, the tradeoff between the tracking performance and the control input energy is achieved, and the effect from the external disturbance to the controlled outputs is minimized. The eigenvalue positions of the system matrix of the closed-loop system are also incorporated to tradeoff between the control inputs and the transient responses. The vehicle states, including vehicle yaw rate, lateral and longitudinal velocities, are simultaneously controlled to track their respective references. Simulations for different fault types and various driving scenarios are carried out with a high-fidelity, CarSim^®, full-vehicle model. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed FT control approach.