Robust MPC-RG for an autonomous racing vehicle considering obstacles and the battery state of charge

The design of a controller able to deal with uncertainties and physical constraints plays an essential role in fast and complex systems. Then, a reference governor approach based on model predictive control (MPC-RG) for an autonomous racing vehicle is proposed. The MPC-RG guarantees constraint satisfaction and recursive feasibility online while including obstacle avoidance capability and energy-aware management by solving a multi-objective optimization problem. In particular, a trade-off between maximizing the longitudinal velocity and the state of charge of the vehicle’s battery, as well as minimizing the variation of control actions is adopted. Moreover, the proposed MPC-RG is combined with a state-feedback linear quadratic regulator (LQR) and a Kalman filter (KF) to compensate for modeling errors and exogenous disturbances, as well as to estimate the unmeasured lateral velocity. In fact, for control and estimation purposes, a data-driven Takagi–Sugeno (TS) model trained by an adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference network is used. The performance of the developed approach is assessed in simulations using a well-known case study based on a 1/10 scale RC electric car.