Vehicle steering control based on robust control for high lateral accelerations: Experimental evaluation

This paper proposes a robust switching control for vehicle steering input. This control is constructed from a robust switching two-PID control to correct the lateral displacement and yaw angle of the vehicle. The controllers are based on LMI-theory stabilizing optimal and on linear time-invariant models of the vehicle, obtained around its nominal operating point. The different gains of both PID controllers are managed by a switch depending on the velocity. These controllers were developed for an application known as “Itinerary Rupture Diagnosis”: to evaluate the physical limits of a vehicle negotiating a bend, this application requires a tool to determine the steering commands to be applied to a vehicle model, making extrapolations with respect to speed. This study includes performance tests on a nonlinear four-wheel model, using experimental data from a Peugeot 307 prototype vehicle developed by INRETS-MA.