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Path tracking is one of the critical technologies in the autonomous vehicle. Its performance may be seriously affected by disturbance resulting from unpredictable environment like changes in road friction coefficient and parameter uncertainty such as cornering stiffness and mass caused by errors of measurement. Besides, since the vehicle system consisting of many systems is an extremely complex nonlinear system, it is almost impossible for us to establish a precise model of a vehicle especially when it is moving. These inevitable factors influence the control accuracy and even threaten the stability and safety of the vehicle system. This paper proposed a promising solution to this problem, robust MPC (Model Predictive Control) combined with the optimal preview controller for path tracking problems of an autonomous vehicle. The state space model in tracking error variables of a passenger vehicle used for path tracking application is established.

In order to perform differential control instead of the mechanical differential and improve the steering performance of distributed electric vehicles, a two-level differential speed steering control strategy is proposed. Firstly, an upper-layer controller to track the yaw rate is designed based on PID feedback and 3-D lookup table model, which could shorten the response time and reduce the impact of model parameters mismatch. Then, in order to improve the robustness to external disturbances and parameter uncertainties, a lower-layer controller to track the wheel speed is proposed based on integral sliding mode control. Moreover, three simulations are conducted to validate the proposed strategy. The first simulation results indicate that the driving torques of the inner and outer wheels are distributed properly to avoid wheel slip. In the second simulation, when the conventional steering system fails, the proposed control strategy could avoid vehicle losing steering function.