Torque Vectoring and Rear-Wheel-Steering Control for Vehicle's Uncertain Slips on Soft and Slope Terrain Using Sliding Mode Algorithm

Off-road vehicles always experience serious uncertain longitudinal and lateral slips when running on soft and slope terrains, and some parameters of the vehicles, such as the cornering stiffness and the slip of wheels, are always not constants. In this paper, control strategies for the torque of each wheel and the rear-wheel-steering angle are proposed to maintain a stable velocity and approach an ideal reference model for the off-road vehicle by using second-order sliding mode (SOSM) techniques. An observer is constructed to estimate the actual sideslip angle of the vehicle with the consideration of uncertainties and disturbances of the system. Then, with conditions of bounded uncertainties and disturbances, composite super-twisting (ST) controllers combined with a velocity controller are designed to generate the total torque, the differential torque, and the rear-wheel-steering angle. On this basis, the proposed controllers have been verified to lead good robustness for maintaining the stable velocity and approaching the ideal reference model by using an optimal torque allocation controller at a lower layer. In comparison with conventional yaw moment controllers without the rear-wheel-steering control, the proposed controllers are shown to be more effective.