Hierarchical MPC Scheme for Ground Motion of Four-Wheel Independently Driven Electric Vehicles

Four-wheel independently driven (4WID) electric vehicles (EVs) are broadly regarded as the ideal next-generation vehicles due to the unique powertrain configuration which significantly increases the control flexibility offering more potential in improving tracking performance and extending driving range compared with traditional EVs. This paper proposes a hierarchical model predictive control (MPC) scheme for ground motion of 4WID EVs to minimize the energy consumption during driving cycles without sacrificing the tracking performance of ground motions. The upper MPC controller guarantees the excellent tracking performance of the vehicle’s longitudinal velocity and yaw rate. The lower MPC controller allocates torques to four independently controllable motors to realize the computed optimal energy-efficient torque distribution. A typical driving maneuver consisting of acceleration, double lane changing, and deceleration is conducted by MATLAB/Simulink and CarSim co-simulation. The results demonstrated that the proposed hierarchical MPC scheme effectively reduce the energy consumption by 7.9% without sacrificing the tracking performance.