Hybrid control for low-regular nonlinear systems: application to an embedded control for an electric vehicle

Thomas Chambrion (1, 2) , Gilles Millérioux (3)

1 SPHINX - Systems with physical heterogeneities : inverse problems, numerical simulation, control and stabilization
2 IECL - Institut Élie Cartan de Lorraine
3 CRAN - Centre de Recherche en Automatique de Nancy

This note presents an embedded automatic control strategy for a low consumption vehicle equipped with an " on/off " engine. The main difficulties are the hybrid nature of the dynamics, the non smoothness of the dynamics of each mode, the uncertain environment, the fast changing dynamics, and low cost/ low consumption constraints for the control device. Human drivers of such vehicles frequently use an oscillating strategy, letting the velocity evolve between fixed lower and upper bounds. We present a general justification of this very simple and efficient strategy, that happens to be optimal for autonomous dynamics, robust and easily adaptable for real-time control strategy. Effective implementation in a competition prototype involved in low-consumption races shows that automatic velocity control achieves performances comparable with the results of trained human drivers. Major advantages of automatic control are improved robustness and safety. The total average power consumption for the control device is less than 10 mW.

Domaines: Optimisation et contrôle [math.OC]

Thomas Chambrion, Gilles Millérioux. Hybrid control for low-regular nonlinear systems: application to an embedded control for an electric vehicle. 2017. ⟨hal-01567396⟩