Model predictive path following control with acceleration constraints for front steering vehicles

There is a demand for autonomous driving control in front-wheel steering vehicles because it is expected to make driving safer and easier and also to reduce the driving workload. In order to perform safe driving with autonomous driving control, it is necessary to consider unexpected disturbances when the vehicle is moving and that tire forces have limitations. We propose autonomous driving control combining Model Predictive Control (MPC) and Sliding Mode Control (SMC). In this paper, we employ MPC in order to consider the maximum tire forces. SMC is employed to deal with unexpected disturbances that the model has not anticipated. Furthermore, we confirmed that path following control is possible by practical inspection using a small front-wheel steering vehicle that is susceptible to unexpected disturbances.