Experimental Verification of a Drift Controller for Autonomous Vehicle Tracking: a Circular Trajectory Using LQR Method

This study develops an autonomous vehicle control method that enables it to perform a drift maneuver which is an expert driving technique consisting of sliding the rear wheel intentionally for fast cornering. By developing an autonomous control algorithm for such an agile maneuver, the safety of the future autonomous vehicle on extreme conditions such as slippery road, will be increased. Drift equilibrium states are derived to find the suitable feedforward control input for the scale car to enter the drifting region. In addition, a feedback controller is designed based on the linear quadratic regulator method in order to track the circular trajectory and maintain drift equilibrium states. To validate the performance of the developed control algorithm a 1:10 scale car experimental platform is developed with on-board control and sensor system. The feasibility of the developed method for the autonomous vehicle is confirmed through both simulation and experiments following circular trajectories while maintaining the desired equilibrium states.