A novel composite adaptive terminal sliding mode controller for farm vehicles lateral path tracking control

In recent years, the agricultural applications of unmanned vehicles have garnered significant attention thanks to the rapid development of global positioning systems, inertial navigation technology, and control theory. In this study, a novel sliding mode controller for farm vehicles lateral path tracking control in the presence of unknown disturbances is created. Based on the standard kinematic model and the study of agricultural circumstances, the kinematic error model with unknown external disturbances and severe nonlinearity is initially constructed. To deal with the disturbances that exist in the lateral path tracking system, this work offers a finite-time disturbance observer-based composite terminal sliding mode control (FDOB-CTSMC). Meanwhile, the finite-time disturbance observer-based composite adaptive terminal sliding mode control (FDOB-CATSMC) is developed on the basis of the sliding mode filter and the adaptive control technology, which will significantly reduce the controller chattering issue. Using the Lyapunov theory, the finite-time convergence of the lateral deviation and the sliding variable can be verified. The numerical simulations demonstrate that the proposed controller is far better than the traditional path tracking controllers.