Interactive Control Paradigm-Based Robust Lateral Stability Controller Design for Autonomous Automobile Path Tracking With Uncertain Disturbance: A Dynamic Game Approach

Stability as well as robustness is the major concerns in the design of a trajectory tracking controller for an autonomous vehicle. In this paper, a novel lateral stability controller design for vehicle path tracking is developed. First, using dynamic game theory as a general framework, vehicle lateral stability can be viewed as a dynamic difference game so that its two players, namely, the active front steering (AFS) system and active rear steering (ARS) system can work together to provide more stability for vehicle path tracking control. The interactive steering control strategies between AFS and ARS are obtained by noncooperative closed-loop feedback Stackelberg game theory to ensure optimal performance for vehicle path tracking. Then, based on the proposed path-following shared control paradigm, by applying the method of zero-sum game theory, a finite-time robust regulator is developed to make the interaction model more robust to uncertain lateral disturbances. Finally, double-lane change and serpentine driving condition with and without uncertain time-varying lateral disturbance are used to evaluate the proposed control algorithm. Simulation and hardware-in-loop implementation results show that the proposed shared control paradigm based robust path-tracking controller can robustly provide better lateral stability when time varying lateral disturbances are bounded.