LTV-MPC approach for lateral vehicle guidance by front steering at the limits of vehicle dynamics

In this paper, a linear time-varying model-based predictive controller (LTV-MPC) for lateral vehicle guidance by front steering is proposed. Due to the fact that this controller is designed in the scope of a Collision Avoidance System, it has to fulfill the requirement of an appropiate control performance at the limits of vehicle dynamics. To achieve this objective, the introduced approach employs estimations of the applied steering angle as well as the state variable trajectory to be used for successive linearization of the nonlinear prediction model over the prediction horizon. To evaluate the control performance, the proposed controller is compared to a LTV-MPC controller that uses linearizations of the nonlinear prediction model that remain unchanged over the prediction horizon. Simulation results show that an improved control performance can be achieved by the estimation based approach.