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Title: Autonomous Drifting with 3 Minutes of Data via Learned Tire Models
Near the limits of adhesion, the forces generated by a tire are nonlinear and intricately coupled. Efficient and accurate modelling in this region could improve safety, especially in emergency situations where high forces are required. To this end, we propose a novel family of tire force models based on neural ordinary differential equations and a neural-ExpTanh parameterization. These models are designed to satisfy physically insightful assumptions while also having sufficient fidelity to capture higher-order effects directly from vehicle state measurements. They are used as drop-in replacements for an analytical brush tire model in an existing nonlinear model predictive control framework. Experiments with a customized Toyota Supra show that scarce amounts of driving data – less than three minutes – is sufficient to achieve high-performance autonomous drifting on various trajectories with speeds up to 45mph. Comparisons with the benchmark model show a 4x improvement in tracking performance, smoother control inputs, and faster and more consistent computation time.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
2214939
PAR ID:
10522930
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ;
Publisher / Repository:
IEEE
Date Published:
ISBN:
979-8-3503-2365-8
Page Range / eLocation ID:
968 to 974
Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
Training Computational modeling Force Ordinary differential equations Robot sensing systems Mathematical models Tires
Format(s):
Medium: X
Location:
London, United Kingdom
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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