Fast disturbance observer‐based adaptive integral terminal sliding mode control for a vehicle steer‐by‐wire system

Abstract This study proposes a new adaptive integral terminal sliding mode control (AITSMC) with input saturation for a vehicle steer‐by‐wire (SbW) system. A fast disturbance observer compensates for uncertainties, external disturbances, and input saturation nonlinearities. An adaptation mechanism is applied to improve the performance of the controller which makes the designed control scheme more applicable to control an SbW system. Based on the Lyapunov stability theorem, the finite‐time convergence of the disturbance observer and the output tracking error is proved in the presence of disturbance and nonsymmetric actuator saturation. At last, using the co‐simulation platform of CarSim® and MATLAB/Simulink, two numerical simulations are carried out under challenging maneuvers and road conditions to examine the controller's performance. The results confirm its sufficiency regarding accuracy and robustness for the SbW system.