Path Following and Lateral-Yaw-Roll Stability Integrated Control Method for Autonomous Distributed Drive Electric Buses

In order to improve the path following performance and solve the stability problems of autonomous distributed drive electric buses, this paper proposed a path following and lateral-yaw-roll stability integrated control method. Firstly, to cope with the varying speed during different maneuvers and roll motion of autonomous distributed drive electric buses, a nonlinear 4-DOF vehicle dynamic model which includes rolling and longitudinal movement is established. Secondly, a hierarchical control method is built, in the upper layer, a model predictive controller (MPC) is designed to generate the control inputs, which is obtained through an optimization problem including path following error and vehicle stability condition, especially the roll stability for buses, and for the lower layer, the torque of each drive wheel is distributed through solving an optimization problem about drive requirement and tire utilization. Finally, the validation of the proposed method is carried out through TruckSim-Simulink co-simulation, the results illustrate that both following accuracy and vehicle stability are obtained more effectively than the popular linear MPC method, especially roll stability is guaranteed under extreme condition.