On Highly-Skilled Autonomous Competition Vehicles: An FSM for Autonomous Rallycross

This paper introduces a novel Finite State Machine (FSM) which behaviour resembles professional Rallycross drivers. Essentially, the proposed FSM integrates different driving states like racing-line-based and autonomous-drifting to drive the car at the limits of handling through tight track layouts and changing road surfaces, as professional drivers do. In particular, the drift stabilisation and agile manoeuvring tasks are realised by coordinating the intervention of four independent Electric Motors (EMs), Steer-by-Wire (SBW), and Electro-Hydraulic Braking (EHB) systems, while the friction adaptation attribute is achieved by means of a machine-learning-based approach. The ability of the FSM to drive at the limits of handling through a high-demanding virtual Rallycross track is assessed in IPG-CarMaker. The results evidence the potential of the proposed FSM for the development of future Highly-Skilled Autonomous Vehicles (HSAV).