A Novel Event-Triggered Torque Vectoring Control for Improving Lateral Stability and Communication Resource Consumption of Electric Vehicles
Pak Kin Wong, Di Ao
Abstract
The latest electric vehicles (EVs) are becoming increasingly complex and resource-intensive owing to their advanced functional capabilities and autonomy. In this study, EVs are considered as cyber-physical systems (CPS), and a novel event-triggered sliding mode controller (ET-SMC) with a hierarchical framework is developed to enhance lateral stability and reduce communication resource consumption in EVs through torque vectoring control (TVC). The high-level controller of the ET-SMC is designed based on a nonlinear vehicle model, and its stability is rigorously proven using the Lyapunov and input-to-state stable (ISS) theorems. Additionally, a traditional periodic sliding mode controller (SMC) is developed as a benchmark controller. The Sine-with-Dwell (SwD) test scenario, an internationally recognized method for verifying lateral stability, is employed to evaluate the control performance using a hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) test bench. The experimental results demonstrate that the ET-SMC can not only maintain similar control performance in enhancing lateral stability but also reduce controller communication resource consumption by approximately 30% compared to the periodic SMC in this typical driving scenario. These results show that the proposed control algorithm is promising for future EVs.