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For an electric vehicle driven by four in-wheel motors, the torque of each wheel can be controlled precisely and independently. A closed-loop control method of differential drive assisted steering (DDAS) has been proposed to improve vehicle steering properties based on those advantages. With consideration of acceleration requirement, a three dimensional characteristic curve that indicates the relation between torque and angle of the steering wheel at different vehicle speeds was designed as a basis of the control system. In order to deal with the saturation of motor's output torque under certain conditions, an anti-windup PI control algorithm was designed. Simulations and vehicle tests, including pivot steering test, lemniscate test and central steering test were carried out to verify the performance of the DDAS in steering portability and road feeling.

In this paper we present a path following control design for a six-wheel skid-steering vehicle. Contrary to the common approaches that impose non-holonomic constraints, a dynamic vehicle model is established based on a pseudo-static tire model, which uses tire slip to determine tire forces. Our control system admits a modular structure, where a motion controller computes the reference vehicle yaw rate and reference vehicle speed and a dynamics controller tracks these signals. A robust nonlinear control law is designed to track the reference wheel speeds determined by the dynamics controller with proved stability properties. Saturated control techniques are employed in designing the reference yaw rate, which ensures the magnitude of the reference yaw rate does not violate the constraint from the ground-tire adhesion. The simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed path following control design.

Distributed drive electric vehicle (EV) is driven by four independent hub motors mounted directly in wheels and retains traditional hydraulic brake system. So it can quickly produce driving/braking motor torque and large stable hydraulic braking force. In this paper a new control allocation strategy for distributed drive electric vehicle is proposed to improve vehicle's lateral stability performance. It exploits the quick response of motor torque and controllable hydraulic pressure of the hydraulic brake system. The allocation strategy consists of two sections. The first section uses an optimal allocation controller to calculate the total longitudinal force of each wheel. In the controller, a dynamic efficiency matrix is designed via local linearization to improve lateral stability control performance, as it considers the influence of tire coupling characteristics over yaw moment control in extreme situations.