Control of electric vehicles with autonomous corner modules: implementation aspects and fault handling

Journal article, 2008

In this paper, vehicle dynamics for electric vehicles equipped with in-wheel motors and individual steering actuators are studied adopting the principles of optimal tyre-force allocation. A simple method for describing the constraints owing to tyre and actuator limitations is described. The control architecture is evaluated by investigating its response to realistic fault conditions. The evaluation demonstrates that the control architecture's ability to ensure vehicle stability generally is good. However, during major faults and extreme driving situations, vehicle stability is not maintained unless the constraints in the optimisation process used for tyre-force allocation are adapted to the specific fault.