Digital sliding mode controllers for active control of ground vehicles

This paper aims at designing, in the discrete‐time setting and using sliding mode techniques, some controllers ensuring the tracking of desired references of lateral and yaw velocities for a ground vehicle with active front steering and rear torque vectoring actuators. The vehicle is described by an enhanced discrete‐time model, recently presented in the literature. These three controllers have been designed considering the modified equivalent control method for perturbation attenuation, the discrete‐time‐like super‐twisting algorithm, and the discrete‐time reaching law. They have been tested with a simulation study using CarSim, where the three controllers are compared under parametric variations, external perturbations, and different sampling periods.