Coordinated Tracking Control of the Integrated Wheel-End System Based on Generalized Instantaneous Steering Center Constraint

Compared to traditional chassis systems, the integrated wheel-end (IWE) offers independent control of each wheel. However, network delays in the CAN system challenge its high-precision cooperative tracking control. Therefore, this work proposes a coordinated tracking control strategy for the IWE system based on a generalized instantaneous steering center (ISC) constraint. First, the model of controlled objects based on ISC is established. It transforms the coordination problem of multiple IWE systems into the tracking control problem of single variable ISC to reduce the computational complexity. Second, considering the time-delay characteristics of multiactuator asynchronous communication, the event trigger condition based on the generalized ISC boundary is designed, and the generalized event-triggered IWE model predictive control (GET-MPC) strategy for time-delay systems is proposed. Its characteristic is that the control input time-delay factor is not only considered in the new controlled object model, but the influence of time-delay on tracking control performance is also further reduced by the generalized ISC trigger condition. The hardware-in-the-loop experiment results show that in the comprehensive test scenario, the average tracking error of the GET-MPC algorithm proposed in this article is reduced by 26.59%, effectively improving the system’s tracking accuracy under the network communication delay.