Sliding Mode Control of an Autonomous Ground Vehicle via Flatness Based Feedback Linearization

This paper presents the design of a flatness based linearisation control approach for the longitudinal and lateral dynamics of an autonomous ground vehicle. Since the system dynamics can be affected by unavoidable modelling uncertainties and disturbances, this motivates the introduction of sliding mode controllers to further robustify the proposed control scheme. More precisely, relying on a 3 degrees-of-freedom (DoF) nonlinear single-track model of the vehicle, its flatness properties are analysed and a state-feedback linearisation is then applied in order to transform the nonlinear vehicle model into a Brunovsky canonical form, which is eligible for designing sliding mode controllers of suitable order. Finally, simulation results, carried out on a realistic vehicle model, are illustrated to assess the proposal even in comparison with a classical proportional-integral-derivative (PID) control law.