Vehicle lateral stability using a front steer by wire device and Set Membership Predictive Control techniques

The problem of yaw rate control of a vehicle equipped with a front steer-by-wire device is considered. In order to effectively handle both the system nonlinearities and the input constraints, a Nonlinear Model Predictive Control (NMPC) technique is adopted. A novelty of this paper is that the vehicle model employed by the NMPC algorithm is identified directly from previously collected input/output data, using a Nonlinear Set Membership (NSM) identification methodology. The measure of the model uncertainty provided by the NSM approach allows to perform a theoretical robust stability analysis of the closed loop system. The effectiveness of the proposed technique is shown through numerical simulations of maneuvers using a detailed vehicle model.