Adaptive Vehicle Skid Control

Abstract

In this paper, adaptive vehicle skid control, for stability and tracking of a vehicle during slippage of its wheels without braking, is addressed. Two adaptive control algorithms are developed: one for the case when no road condition information is available, and one for the case when certain information is known only about the instant type of road surface on which the vehicle is moving. The vehicle control system with an adaptive control law keeps the speed of the vehicle as desired by applying more power to the drive wheels where the additional driving force at the non-skidding wheel will compensate for the loss of the driving force at the skidding wheel, and also arranges the direction of the vehicle motion by changing the steering angle of the two front steering wheels. Stability analysis proves that the vehicle position and velocity errors are both bounded. With additional road surface information available, the adaptive control system guarantees that the vehicle position error and velocity error converge to zero asymptotically even if the road surface parameters are unknown.