Fault Tolerant Control for Autonomous Vehicle by Generating References for Rear Wheels Steering

This paper deals with the fault tolerant control of an autonomous four-wheels-steering vehicle. In normal situations, the trajectory of the vehicle is controlled using the only front wheels steering actuator. It is known that the stability of the vehicle may be lost in specific faulty scenarios of the front wheels steering mechanism. An original approach is proposed, where rear wheels steering actuator is actively controlled in order to ensure the trajectory tracking in presence of front wheels steering faults. A dynamic references generator for rear wheels steering controller is designed using the flatness property of the studied system and is activated as soon as a fault is detected. This method is tested and validated on a realistic vehicle dynamic model simulated using CarSim software.