A Potential field approach-based trajectory control for autonomous electric vehicles with in-wheel motors

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.