LI et al.: FAULT-TOLERANT OUTPUT TRACKING CONTROL OF 4WS4WD ROAD VEHICLES 171
Yaw dynamics
I
z
˙
Γ=a(F
x12
sin α
f
+F
y12
cos α
f
)
− b(F
x34
sin α
r
+ F
y34
cos α
r
)
+
d
2
(−F
x12
cos α
f
+ F
y12
sin α
f
+ F
x34
cos α
r
− F
y34
sin α
r
)+f
Γ
(·) (5)
where
F
x12
=(F
x
1
+ F
x
2
) F
x34
=(F
x
3
+ F
x
4
)
F
y12
=(F
y
1
+ F
y
2
) F
y34
=(F
y
3
+ F
y
4
).
In the preceding equations, T
f
and T
r
represent the steering
torques for the front and rear wheels, respectively;
˙
θ
s
i
(i =
1−4) denote the angular velocity of each wheel; J
s
i
(i = 1−4),
J
f
, and J
r
are the moment inertia of each wheel and the
front and rear steering axles, respectively; f
s
i
(i = 1−4) are
the viscous friction coefficients of the four wheels; f
f
and f
r
denote the viscous friction coefficients of the front and rear
steering axles, respectively; k
f
and k
r
are the front and rear
steering motor torque coefficients, respectively; D is the width
of the contact surface between the wheel and the road; I
z
is the
vehicle inertia around the yaw axle; and f
θ
i
(·), f
x
(·), f
y
(·),
f
a
f
(·), and f
Γ
(·) model the external disturbing force/torque
(e.g., bearing slippage) acting on the system, which can be
assumed unknown but bounded.
From the control system point of view, the complete states
that reflect the dynamic behavior of the vehicle are the 17
variables consisting of eight rotational angle and angular ve-
locity variables of the four wheels, four lateral and longitudinal
displacement and velocity variables of the vehicle, four steering
angle and angular velocity variables of the front and rear
wheels, as well as the yaw rate variable of the vehicle, i.e.,
x =
⎡
⎢
⎢
⎢
⎣
(
˙
θ
s
1
,
˙
θ
s
2
,
˙
θ
s
3
,
˙
θ
s
4
, )
T
(θ
s
1
,θ
s
2
,θ
s
3
,θ
s
4
, )
T
(˙x
c
,x
c
, ˙y
c
,y
c
)
T
(˙α
f
,α
f
, ˙α
r
,α
r
)
T
Γ
⎤
⎥
⎥
⎥
⎦
∈ R
17
and the output vector of interest in vehicle maneuvering is y =
(
˙
θ
s
1
,
˙
θ
s
2
,
˙
θ
s
3
,
˙
θ
s
4
,α
f
,α
r
)
T
∈ R
6
. Note that the steering angles
cannot be adjusted/commanded directly from the mechanical
point of view. Instead, the adjustment of the steering angle is
accomplished through a certain motor/actuation unit. Thus, we
consider the driving torques for the wheels as the direct control
inputs, so that the following dynamic model of the vehicle can
be established without the need for small-angle approximation:
˙
x = f (x)+B(x)(u
a
+ d(x,t))
y = Cx
(6)
where u
a
=[T
1
T
2
T
3
T
4
T
f
T
r
]
T
are the actual
wheel driving/braking torques for the four wheels and the actual
steering torques for the front and rear wheels, respectively; d(·)
represents the generalized external disturbance; and f (·) is a
nonlinear function defined as
f(x)=[f
1
(·) f
2
(·) f
3
(·) ··· f
16
(·) f
17
(·)]
T
with variables explicitly defined at the bottom of the next page.
Note that any maneuvering operation of the vehicle can be
achieved by controlling the four wheels and at the same time
steering both rear and front wheels properly. Therefore, the
control objective is to generate suitable torques for the four
wheels, the two pairs of front steering wheels, and the two pairs
of rear wheels of the vehicle, so that the four wheel angular
velocities
˙
θ
s
1
,
˙
θ
s
2
,
˙
θ
s
3
, and
˙
θ
s
4
, as well as the front and rear
wheel steering angles α
f
and α
r
, are automatically adjusted to
the specific desired commands.
Remark 1: In most existing works, both α
f
and α
r
are
treated as the control inputs that can be designed/commanded
directly [18]–[26]. As such treatment leads to a non-affine
model, small-angle approximation/linearization (i.e., assuming
α small enough so that cos α = 1 and sin α = α) has to be
utilized to design the control scheme. Apparently, the perfor-
mance of the small-angle-based control scheme might not be
well maintained in practice for higher speed and larger steering
angle operations. In this paper, the steering angles, together
with the angular positions and angular velocities, are treated
as the variables to be controlled, rather than the ones able to
control, and consequently, small-steering-angle assumption is
no longer needed.
III. F
AULT-TOLERANT CONTROL DESIGN
FOR
OUTPUT TRACKING
This section focuses on designing an adaptive fault-tolerant
output tracking control scheme for a class of nonlinear systems
arisen from practical applications, including highway vehicles.
More specifically, we consider the following nonlinear system
under actuator faults and external disturbances:
˙
x = f (x)+B(x)(u
a
+ d(x,t))
y = h(x)
(7)
where x(t) ∈ R
n
, u
a
(t) ∈ R
m
, and y(t) ∈ R
r
(n ≥ m ≥ r)
are vectors of system state, control input, and output, re-
spectively; f(x) ∈ R
n
, B(x) ∈ R
n×m
, and h(x) ∈ R
r
are
nonlinear vector functions with appropriate dimensions; and
d(x,t) ∈ R
m
models external disturbances acting on the
system.
When actuator failures occur, the actual control input u
a
to
the system is no longer the designed input u. Instead, they are
related by
u
a
(t)=ρ(t)u + w(t) (8)
where ρ =diag{ρ
i
(t)} is a diagonal matrix with ρ
i
(t) ∈ (0, 1]
(i = 1, 2,...,m) being the time-varying scalar function called
the actuator efficiency factor, or the “health indicator” [19];
w(t) denotes a vector function corresponding to the portion of
the control action produced by the actuator that is completely
out of control. Obviously, such w(t) might be time varying.
Note that the case of ρ
i
= 0 corresponds to the situation that
the ith actuator fails to work completely. This case, although
out of the scope of this paper, can be addressed by using
the redundant actuation systems to reallocate the remaining
actuators to maintain the control performance.