Reference Governor for Constrained Piecewise Affine Systems. A Vehicle Dynamics Control Application

In this paper we present a novel approach to the design of reference tracking controllers for constrained, discrete-time piecewise affine systems and apply it to a vehicle yaw control problem. The paper is divided in two parts. In the first part, we present a methodology for designing reference tracking controllers for constrained, discrete-time piecewise affine systems. The approach follows the idea of reference governor techniques where the desired set-point is filtered by a system called the “reference governor”. Based on the system current state, set-point, and prescribed constraints, the reference governor computes a new set-point for a low-level controller so that the state and input constraints are satisfied and convergence to the original set-point is guaranteed. In the second part of the paper, we apply the proposed approach to a vehicle dynamics control problem where the vehicle yaw rate have to be controlled through an Active Front Steering (AFS) system.