Electronic Differential System Based on Adaptive SMC Combined with QP for 4WID Electric Vehicles

This study investigates an adaptive differential control system for 4WID (4-wheel-independent-drive) electric vehicles. The novel adaptive system will maneuver the independently operating hub motors without the help of any conventional steering mechanism. The control system consists of a hierarchical structure to confront the vehicle stability condition, which includes a novel SMC (sliding mode control) with a fuzzy algorithm parameter modification to achieve the required virtual control signal at the top level, and a quadratic programming-based torque allocation algorithm at the bottom-level controller. The proposed controller was tested through Simulink/Carsim simulation and experiments. All the test cases showed the advantages of the proposed method over some of the currently existing 4WID control strategies