Robust vehicle lateral stabilisation via set-based methods for uncertain piecewise affine systems

The paper presents the design of a lateral stability controller for ground vehicles based on front steering and four wheels independent braking. The control objective is to track yaw rate and lateral velocity reference signals while avoiding front and rear wheel traction force saturation. Control design is based on an approximate piecewise-affine nonlinear dynamical model of the vehicle. Vehicle longitudinal velocity and drivers steering input are modelled as measured disturbances taking values in a compact set. A time-optimal control strategy which ensures convergence into a maximal robust control invariant (RCI) set is proposed. This paper presents the uncertain model, the RCI computation, and the control algorithm. Experimental tests at high-speed on ice with aggressive driver manoeuvres show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.