Path Tracking and Handling Stability Control Strategy with Collision Avoidance for the Autonomous Vehicle under Extreme Conditions

A novel control strategy is proposed for the autonomous vehicle equipped with the front and rear independent steering systems to enhance the capability of collision avoidance and improve path tracking and handling stability under critical maneuvers. The novel control system includes a path replanning controller, a path tracking controller, and a stability controller. The path replanning controller is designed to generate a collision-free trajectory by optimizing a cost function. The cost function can be updated quickly and iteratively, according to the dynamic fitting matrix and measurement signals. The path tracking controller and the stability controller with considering multi-constraints are designed to generate the steering angle of the front wheel and the rear wheel, respectively, which improve the ability of path tracking and handling stability of the autonomous vehicle under extreme conditions. The real-time effectiveness of the proposed control strategy is verified and evaluated in Hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulation environment. The function of collision avoidance of the control algorithm is verified in the scenario of the preset obstacle artificially on the globally planned path. The proposed control strategy, presents superior performance against two other control strategies based on model predictive control algorithm, and also exhibits satisfactory performance in terms of path tracking as well as handling stability of the autonomous vehicle.