Robustness and performance issues for advanced control of vehicle dynamics

A robust controller design task for longitudinal and lateral dynamics of non-identical autonomous road vehicles is considered. In order to use identical controllers for different vehicles the varying parameters are regarded as unstructured model uncertainties. How unstructured model uncertainties are described and how they are taken into account during the controller design process is briefly presented. The control concept used for plants with model uncertainties in a form of a standard H_∞ control task is described. The resulting longitudinal and lateral control laws for non-identical vehicles are discussed concerning the varying vehicle parameters. The first practical results with one of the control law for longitudinal and lateral dynamics of non-identical autonomous vehicles are presented. It is shown that through an appropriate choice of design parameters, varying vehicle dynamics can be taken into account without substantial losses regarding accuracy and dynamics