Design of an adaptive sliding mode controller for robust yaw stabilisation of in-wheel-motor-driven electric vehicles

A robust yaw stability control system is designed to stabilise the vehicle yaw motion. Vehicles undergo changes in parameters and disturbances with respect to the wide range of driving conditions, e.g., tyre–road conditions. Therefore, a robust control design technique is required to guarantee system stability and enhance the robustness. In this paper, a sliding mode control methodology is applied to make vehicle yaw rate to track its reference with robustness against model uncertainties and disturbances. In addition, a parameter adaptation law is also applied to estimate varying vehicle parameters with respect to road conditions and is incorporated into sliding mode control framework. The control performance of the proposed control system was evaluated through field tests.