Obtaining Desired Vehicle Dynamics Characteristics with Independently Controlled In-Wheel Motors: State of Art Review

In recent times, electric vehicles (EV) are gaining a lot of attention as they run clean and are environment friendly. Recent advances in the applications of integrating control systems in automotive vehicles have made it practicable to accomplish improvement in vehicle's longitudinal and lateral dynamics. This paper deals with a brief overview of current state of art vehicle technologies like direct yaw moment control, traction control and side slip control of EV. There are various controller algorithms available in literature with different torque vectoring strategies. As EV can be precisely controlled because of quick in hub wheel motor response times, therefore various torque vectoring strategies can be comfortably used for enhancing vehicle dynamics. Moreover, by using four independent in-wheel motors, several types of motion controls can be performed. These motion controls are intensively researched by a comprehensive literature review with an aim to obtain desired vehicle handling characteristics. The motivation behind doing this study is to obtain a guideline for systematic development of control strategy. The control law development is discussed in three subsequent stages, namely, Supervisory control, Upper level control and Lower level control. The controller is to be designed and implemented for the torque management of the four independent electric traction motors of a FOX racing electric car.Cross Reference: