Robust Tube-MPC Trajectory Tracking Control for Four-Wheel Independent Steering Vehicles on Intermittent Snowy and Icy Roads

• DOI: 10.1186/s10033-025-01232-8
• Publication Date: 2025-05-15T02:59:40Z
• Authors: Xiaochuan Zhou; Ruiqi Liu; Jinyu Zhou; Ziyu Zhang; Chunyan Wang; Wanzhong Zhao
• Keywords: Tracking (education); Model Predictive Control

Abstract Four-Wheel Independent Steering (4WIS) Vehicles can independently control the angle of each wheel, demonstrating superior trajectory tracking performance under normal conditions. However, on intermittent icy and snowy roads, presence time-varying adhesion coefficients, cornering stiffness, irregularities due to ice snow accumulation introduce multiple uncertainties into steering system, significantly degrading 4WIS vehicles. In response, this paper proposes a robust Tube Model Predictive Control (Tube-MPC) method for 4WIS. method, Bi-directional Long Short-Term Memory neural network is established online estimation tire stiffness different road providing accurate wheel mitigate coefficients stiffness. Additionally, considering caused by controller that integrates Tube-MPC Sliding Mode proposed. The nominal MPC model, developed from estimated utilizes sliding surface optimal auxiliary unit law tube derived reaching in Tube-MPC, aiming minimize error while enhancing controller's robustness against uncertainties. experiments show proposed outperforms algorithm terms accuracy robustness. This demonstrates excellent conditions, it lays theoretical foundation future studies vehicle stability such