Experimental evaluation of a chatter free sliding mode control for lateral control in AHS

Presents the design and experimental evaluation of a vehicle lateral controller for automated highway systems (AHS) based on sliding mode control (SMC). The primary control objective is to track the lane center line. The dynamic model of the, vehicle is nonlinear and has parametric uncertainties. SMC, a robust control technique is used to take care of the nonlinearities and parametric uncertainties in the model. Importance is given to reduction or elimination of the control chatter inherent in the SMC systems involving switching functions. An SMC based controller is designed such that asymptotic tracking is assured without chatter. A robust observer is designed for lateral velocity estimation. Closed loop experiments done on a passenger car are presented.