Hierarchical control of differential steering for four-in-wheel-motor electric vehicle

The purpose of this paper is to study the control of differential steering for four-in-wheel-motor electric vehicles. The so-called differential steering means that the front wheel steering is realized through the differential driving torque between the left and right front wheels. With the consideration of tire friction circle, a hierarchical control method is proposed to realize the differential steering and the constant longitudinal speed simultaneously. Firstly, the dynamic models of the front wheel differential steering vehicle, the front wheel differential steering system and the reference vehicle are established. Secondly, the hierarchical controller is designed. The upper controller is to obtain the resultant forces and resultant torque required by the front wheel differential steering vehicle tracking the reference model through the sliding mode controller. In the middle controller, the minimum tire load ratio is selected as the objective function. Combined with the constraints, the resultant forces and resultant torque are decomposed into the longitudinal and lateral forces of four wheels by the quadratic programming method. The lower controller provides the required longitudinal forces and tire sideslip angles for the front wheel differential steering vehicle model through the tire inverse model and the longitudinal force superposition scheme. Simulation results show that the hierarchical controller can guarantee the vehicle to track the reference model well on both of the high and low adhesion coefficient road with all of the tire load ratios smaller than 1. It can be drawn that the control strategy proposed in this paper is effective.