Abstract
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The studies on the autonomous electric vehicle are
quite attractive due to fewer human-induced errors and improved
safety in recent years. Extensive research has been done on the
autonomous steering control of the mobile robot, but study on the
on-road autonomous electric vehicle is still limited. This paper
proposes a potential field method to achieve the trajectory control
of the autonomous electric vehicle with in-wheel motors. Instead
of strictly following a desired path, this method can form a
steering corridor with a desired tracking error tolerance and the
vehicle can be steered smoothly with less control effort. In this
paper, the innovative potential filed function is presented first to
determine the desired vehicle yaw angle. Then, according to this
desired yaw angle, a two-level trajectory controller is proposed
to achieve the trajectory control. Simulation results are shown to
prove that this suggested trajectory controller can successfully
control the vehicle to move within the desired road boundary
and improve the handling and stability performance of the
vehicle.