Active Coordination of The Individually Actuated Wheel Braking and Steering To Enhance Vehicle Lateral Stability and Handling ⋆

In this paper, a novel vehicle dynamics controller is proposed by combining two control loops which are formed by the individually actuated wheel braking and steering regulator. The inner braking loop regulates the individual tire force generation and prevents tire force saturation with respect to tire slip. When the tire forces are regulated to operate in the linear region of their nonlinear characteristics, the drive ability and manageability of the vehicle motion dynamics is enhanced in terms of handling and cornering capability. In the outer loop of the proposed control scheme, Linear Quadratic (LQ) optimal controller is introduced in order to assure the overall lateral stability, the driver’s desired yaw rate and the desired trajectory’s tracking with the capability of rejecting the disturbance moment acting on the vehicle model in the lateral direction. Simulation results are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.