A Mixed Sideslip Yaw Rate Stability Controller for Over-Actuated Vehicles

Abstract

Electronic stability control (ESC) has become a fundamental safety feature for passenger cars. Commonly employed ESCs are based on differential braking. Nevertheless, electric vehicles’ growth, particularly those featuring an over-actuated configuration with individual wheel motors, allows for maintaining driveability without slowing down the vehicle. Standard control strategies are based on yaw rate tracking. The reference signal is model-based and needs precise knowledge of the friction coefficient. To increase the system robustness, more sophisticated approaches that include vehicle sideslip are introduced. Still, it is unclear how the two signals have to be weighted, and rarely proposed controllers have been experimentally validated. In this paper, we present a mixed sideslip and yaw rate stability controller. The mixed approach allows to address the control design as a single-input single-output problem simplifying the tuning process. Furthermore, we explain the rationale behind the choice of the weighting parameter. Eventually, the proposed ESC is validated following EU regulation in simulation and with an experimental vehicle on dry asphalt and snow. The results obtained in all the performed tests demonstrate that the proposed control strategy is robust and effective. The mixed approach is able to halve the sideslip in critical conditions with respect to a pure yaw rate approach.