Vehicle Traction Control And its Applications

This paper presents a study of vehicle traction control and discusses its importance in highway automation. A robust control strategy is designed for slip control, which in turn controls the traction. It is shown how traction control can be used to satisfy different objectives of vehicle control. The importance of traction is further emphasized by comparing its performance to passive controllers in a simulation study in which an impulse-like wind disturbance is introduced. The comparative study shows that the system under traction control is stable in the presence of external disturbances, whereas the system under passive control may become unstable in the presence of external disturbances.