Integration of sliding mode based steering control and PSO based drive force control for a 4WS4WD vehicle

The aim of this paper is to present a novel approach to enable a four-wheel steer four-wheel drive (4WS4WD) vehicle to follow a predefined path under force control. The novelty is in the combination of a sliding mode controller that determines the steering angles using a kinematic model and a real-time particle swarm optimization based controller that determines the drive torques using a dynamic model. The dynamic model takes into account all the slip forces acting on the vehicle. The combined controllers are then used to drive the 4WS4WD vehicle to follow a path. In order to enable the implementation of the controllers, the path to be followed is generated using 7-order Bezier curves that can provide smooth kinematic and dynamic reference profiles. Simulation results are provided to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed methodology and its robustness.