Design and Optimization of Robust Path Tracking Control for Autonomous Vehicles With Fuzzy Uncertainty

Uncertainty is a major concern in vehicle path tracking control design. The coefficients of the uncertainty bound are unknown. They are assumed to lie within prescribed fuzzy sets. First, based on the path tracking kinematic model, this article innovatively formulates the vehicle path tracking task as a constraint-following problem. Second, we put forward a deterministic adaptive robust control law with a tunable parameter to ensure the uniform boundedness and ultimate uniform boundedness of the closed-loop system. Third, an optimal scheme for the tunable parameter is proposed based on the fuzzy uncertainty. The resulting optimal robust control (ORC) minimizes a comprehensive fuzzy performance index that involves the fuzzy system performance and the control cost. The results of the CarSim-Simulink cosimulation and the hardware-in-loop experiment together show that the proposed ORC exhibits a superior path tracking performance.