Adaptive Robust Terminal Sliding Mode Control with Integral Backstepping Synthesized Method for Autonomous Ground Vehicle Control

Autonomous ground vehicles (AGVs) operating in complex environments face the challenge of accurately following desired paths while accounting for uncertainties, external disturbances, and initial conditions, necessitating robust and adaptive control strategies. This paper addresses the critical path-tracking task in AGVs through a novel control framework for multilevel speed AGVs, considering both structured and unstructured uncertainties. The control system introduced in this study utilizes a nonlinear adaptive approach by integrating integral backstepping with terminal sliding mode control (IBTSMC). By incorporating integral action, IBTSMC continuously adjusts the control input to minimize tracking errors, improving tracking performance. The hybridization of the terminal sliding mode method enables finite time convergence, robustness, and a chatter-free response with reduced sensitivity to initial conditions. Furthermore, adaptive control compensators are developed to ensure robustness against unknown but bounded external disturbances. The Lyapunov stability theorem is employed to guarantee the global asymptotic stability of the closed-loop system and the convergence of tracking errors to the origin within finite time. To validate the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme, high-fidelity cosimulations are conducted using CarSim and MATLAB. Comparative analysis is performed with other methods reported in the literature. The results confirm that the proposed controller demonstrates competitive effectiveness in path-tracking tasks and exhibits strong efficiency under various road conditions, parametric uncertainties, and unknown disturbances.