Coordinated Control of Hybrid 4WD Vehicles for Enhanced Maneuverability and Lateral Stability

This paper presents a method for coordinated control of hybrid four-wheel drive (4WD) vehicles (H4Vs), which consists of a front internal combustion engine and independent motor-driven rear wheels. H4Vs are equipped with electronic stability control (ESC), active front steering (AFS), and 4WD. For maneuverability and lateral stability, a yaw moment controller is designed. After generating a control yaw moment with a direct yaw moment control, it is distributed with ESC, AFS, and 4WD. Several actuator configurations of ESC, AFS, and 4WD are presented in the framework of the weighted pseudo-inverse based control allocation. Simulation-based tuning is proposed to improve the performance of the yaw moment distribution. Simulations show that the proposed method is effective for the coordinated control of H4Vs for enhanced maneuverability and lateral stability.