Steeringless Drifting: Differential-Torque Control of a Four-Wheel Independently Driven Vehicle

原文アブストラクト

Control methods for emerging vehicle chassis architectures are important for autonomous driving near handling limits. Unlike conventional drift control, which relies on mechanical steering and rear-tire saturation, a steering-free four-wheel independently driven (4WID) vehicle can generate direct yaw moment through differential wheel torques. This paper proposes a differential-torque drift control method for such a vehicle. A double-track vehicle model incorporating four-wheel differential actuation is established, based on which a drift-equilibrium calculation method and a closed-loop drift controller are developed. The proposed approach is validated through simulations and experiments on a 1:10-scale vehicle. The results show that the vehicle can achieve steady circular drifting with a sideslip angle of approximately 20$^\circ$ and perform figure-eight drift tracking. This study demonstrates the feasibility of drift control using only differential wheel torques and provides a new perspective on near-limit control for steering-free vehicle architectures.