A Potential field approach-based trajectory control for autonomous electric vehicles with in-wheel motors

The studies on the autonomous electric vehicle are quite attractive due to fewer human-induced errors and improved safety in recent years. Extensive research has been done on the autonomous steering control of the mobile robot, but study on the on-road autonomous electric vehicle is still limited. This paper proposes a potential field method to achieve the trajectory control of the autonomous electric vehicle with in-wheel motors. Instead of strictly following a desired path, this method can form a steering corridor with a desired tracking error tolerance and the vehicle can be steered smoothly with less control effort. In this paper, the innovative potential filed function is presented first to determine the desired vehicle yaw angle. Then, according to this desired yaw angle, a two-level trajectory controller is proposed to achieve the trajectory control. Simulation results are shown to prove that this suggested trajectory controller can successfully control the vehicle to move within the desired road boundary and improve the handling and stability performance of the vehicle.