Path Tracking of an Autonomous Ground Vehicle With Different Payloads by Hierarchical Improved Fuzzy Dynamic Sliding-Mode Control

A hierarchically improved fuzzy dynamical sliding-model control (HIFDSMC) is presented to address the autonomous ground vehicle (AGV) path tracking problem. The proposed controller has two portions: one is the virtual desired input (VDI), and the second is the path tracking control (PTC). In addition to the equivalent control in VDI and PTC, an improved fuzzy dynamical sliding-mode control (IFDSMC) is designed to deal with the system uncertainties, e.g., different payloads. Contributions of this paper include the following four parts: 1) Based on the nominal system response, the fuzzy rules and scaling factors of the IFDSMCs in the VDI and PTC are easily chosen. In contrast, a conventional fuzzy logic control approach requires more trial-and-error tuning to obtain a satisfactory performance. 2) The proposed HIFDSMC possesses the tuning mechanism (the coefficients of two sliding surfaces, the scaling factors in indirect and direct modes, and the fine tuning in fuzzy table) such that the uncertainties are tackled without a larger computational burden. 3) The stability of the closed-loop system is verified by the Lyapunov stability with hierarchical concept. 4) Different payloads not at the mass center of the AGV (e.g., greater than 25% in the total weight of the AGV) are tackled by the IFDSMCs to obtain a satisfactory performance. Finally, the application to the assembly line of the AGV with different payloads to track the circular and piecewise straight-line paths by the proposed HIFDSMC is compared with the hierarchical fuzzy decentralized PTC.