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

Abstract: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.

Robotics (cs.RO)

arXiv:2607.24863 [cs.RO]

(or arXiv:2607.24863v1 [cs.RO] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2607.24863 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

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