A four-wheel steering four-wheel drive electric vehicle has a steering motor and a driving motor for each wheel, for a total of eight motors. Almost all of the existing pathtracking controllers for this vehicle are designed by viewing the mathematical model of the vehicle as the system of equationṡ x = f (x, u), y = h(x, u), and are mathematically sophisticated. In contrast, this brief presents a block diagrammatic representation of the model, and exploits the natural feedback loops revealed through this representation to develop two novel and useful results: 1) a mathematically simpler path-tracking controller that promises to be easier to tune and 2) a constraint on the wheel accelerations that helps constrain the wheel slips to a desired value. Simulations illustrate this solution.Index Terms-Active wheel, autonomous corner module, disturbance observer (DOB), electric corner module, four-wheel steering four-wheel drive (4WS4WD), input-to-state stability (ISS), path-tracking control (PTC).
1063-6536