Hybrid modeling and predictive control of intelligent vehicle longitudinal velocity considering nonlinear tire dynamics

A hybrid model predictive control (HMPC) strategy is proposed in this paper to autonomously regulate intelligent vehicle longitudinal velocity considering nonlinear tire dynamics. Since the tire longitudinal dynamics, which has significant influence on vehicle longitudinal velocity control performance, exhibits highly nonlinear dynamical behaviors, the piecewise affine (PWA) identification is conducted firstly based on experimental data to accurately model the tire longitudinal dynamics. On this basis, due to that the intelligent vehicle needs to be operated in two distinct modes (drive and brake) for autonomous velocity regulation and because of the affine submodel switching behaviors of the PWA-identified tire model, the intelligent vehicle longitudinal dynamics control process considered in this work can be regarded as a hybrid system with both continuous variables and discrete operating modes. Thus, the mixed logical dynamical framework is further used to model the intelligent vehicle longitudinal dynamics, and a HMPC controller, which allows us to optimize the switching sequences of the operation modes (binary control inputs) and the torques acted on the wheels (continuous control inputs), is tuned based on online mixed-integer quadratic programming. Simulation results finally demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed HMPC controller for intelligent vehicle longitudinal velocity regulation under typical driving conditions.