Predictive Torque Vectoring Control with Active Trail-Braking

In this work we present the development of a torque vectoring controller for electric vehicles. The proposed controller distributes drive/brake torque between the four wheels to achieve the desired handling response and, in addition, intervenes in the longitudinal dynamics in cases where the turning radius demand is infeasible at the speed at which the vehicle is traveling. The proposed controller is designed in the Nonlinear Model Predictive Control framework, which has recently shown great promise for real time implementation. Hence, the controller accounts for critical nonlinearities of the vehicle dynamics in limit handling conditions and constraints from the actuators and tyre-road interaction. We implement the controller in a realistic, high fidelity simulation environment to demonstrate its performance.