This paper presents a novel approach to automated drifting with a standard passenger vehicle, which involves a Nonlinear Model Predictive Control to stabilise and maintain the vehicle at high sideslip angle conditions. The proposed controller architecture is split into three components. The first part consists of the offline computed equilibrium maps, which provide the equilibrium points for each vehicle state given the desired sideslip angle and radius of the path. The second is the predictive controller minimising the errors between the equilibrium and actual vehicle states. The third is a path-following controller, which reduces the path error, altering the equilibrium curvature path. In a high-fidelity simulation environment, we validate the controller architecture capacity to stabilise the vehicle in automated drifting along a desired path, with a maximal lateral path deviation of 1 m. In the experiments with a standard passenger vehicle, we demonstrate that the proposed approach is capable of bringing and maintaining the vehicle at the desired 30 deg sideslip angle in both high and low friction conditions.

翻译：本文提出一种面向标准乘用车自动漂移的新方法，通过非线性模型预测控制实现车辆在大侧偏角条件下的稳定性控制与维持。所提出的控制器架构分为三个部分：第一部分为离线计算生成的平衡态映射图，该映射图能根据期望侧偏角与路径曲率半径提供各车辆状态对应的平衡点；第二部分为预测控制器，用于最小化平衡态与实际车辆状态之间的误差；第三部分为路径跟踪控制器，通过修正平衡曲率路径来减小路径偏差。在高保真仿真环境中，我们验证了该控制器架构在沿期望路径自动漂移时稳定车辆的能力，其最大横向路径偏差为1米。在标准乘用车实车实验中，我们证明了所提方法能够在高摩擦与低摩擦两种路面条件下，将车辆引导并稳定保持在30度期望侧偏角状态。