A Nonlinear Robust Controller Design for Path Following of Intelligent Electrical Vehicle

This paper investigates the lateral control of autonomous electrical vehicles; the objective is to minimize the lateral offset with respect to a given reference path. It presents the design and the validation of a new robust and intelligent control strategy using novel sliding mode control (SMC) considering the uncertainties, tires nonlinearities, parametric variations and mismatched disturbances that are encountered in the driving applications. The molded SMC is based on an improved disturbance observer (DOB), a fuzzy system (FS), and a double reaching law. Compared to the existing methods in the literature, the proposed controller behaves adaptively and intelligently with the perturbations encountered. Also, it guarantees vehicle safety and stability on slippery roads while overcoming all the limitations of conventional SMC. The system's stability has been proven using the Lyapunov stability theorem, and simulation results have been validated across extensive scenarios under extreme driving conditions. Compared to the results of conventional SMC and SMC based on the super-twisting algorithm, the proposed controller has demonstrated its superiority. DOI: 10.61416/ceai.v27i1.9209