Autonomous High-Speed Overtaking of Intelligent Chassis Using Fast Iterative Model Predictive Control

High-speed overtaking is one of the structured driving scenarios of autonomous vehicles (AVs), and safety and real-time control requirements must be fulfilled during this scenario. In this article, we develop an overtaking path-planning and tracking framework for AVs based on the improved artificial potential field (APF) and fast iterative model predictive control (MPC). The improved APF is used to plan a feasible, high-speed overtaking path by considering the constraints of vehicle dynamics and introducing the adjustment factor into the potential function to avoid local optimization and target unreachability problems. In addition, to reduce the computational burden and fulfill the real-time control requirements of trajectory tracking, a fast iterative MPC algorithm is proposed herein. This algorithm adds disturbances that possess the nonlinear characteristics of the real model by using a linearized model. In terms of vehicle configuration, we consider that the target vehicle has the four-wheel steer (4WS)-four-wheel drive (4WD) chassis configuration, and the fast iterative MPC is also used to coordinate the conflict between 4WS and direct yaw moment control (DYC) to improve tracking accuracy and vehicle stability during overtaking. Simulink/Carsim cosimulation and hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) tests are conducted to verify the effectiveness of the proposed controller.