Robust Control for Over-Actuated Vehicles

Many car manufacturers are equipping their vehicles with advanced systems to win the race towards autonomous vehicles. In order to ensure multiple objectives, different embedded systems influencing differently the same physical variable are often implemented in the same vehicle. Most of car manufacturers tend to activate one system at a time, especially when the low-level control of actuators is developed by different equipment suppliers, making the inner dynamics uncertain. However, this limits the potential of the vehicle. This paper discusses the feasibility of coordinating these systems when activated at the same time, while ensuring an acceptable robustness regarding the uncertain dynamics. Results showed good performance in severe maneuvers when combining robust control synthesis and optimization-based control allocation algorithms. Therefore, several embedded systems may be activated at the same time to expand the overall potential of the vehicle and deal with more difficult situations.