Autonomous Obstacle Avoidance for Distributed Drive Electric Vehicles via Dynamic Drifting

Distributed drive electric vehicles (DDEVs) are over-actuated systems, and conventional obstacle avoidance algorithms could not take advantage of the four-wheel independent drive characteristics to expand the handling stability limits during obstacle avoidance. Therefore, this paper established a linear maximum phase recovery envelope (LMPRE) to increase the feasible region of obstacle avoidance trajectory and designed an integrated controller for drifting and typical cornering, i.e., dynamic drifting controller. Thereby, the dynamic drifting obstacle avoidance algorithm for DDEVs is proposed. The algorithm consists of trajectory planning and tracking. The trajectory planning algorithm with drift is devised based on the nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC) framework, and the LMPRE constraint is proposed to consider the vehicle’s drifting ability in the obstacle avoidance trajectory. A dynamic drifting controller (DDC) for distributed drive electric vehicles is built for trajectory tracking, including path tracking layer, vehicle motion control layer, and actuator regulating layer, to realize the integrated control of drifting and typical cornering and to enlarge the operating area of DDEVs during obstacle avoidance. Finally, the hardware-in-the-loop platform is constructed to verify the effectiveness of the dynamic drifting obstacle avoidance algorithm. The experimental results show that the algorithm can realize dynamic drifting maneuvers of DDEVs to bypass obstacles, further enhancing stability and safety.