An Explicit Discrete-Time Dynamic Vehicle Model with Assured Numerical Stability

Abstract: Numerical stability is of great significance for discrete-time dynamic vehicle model. Among the unstable factors, low-speed singularity stands out as one of the most challenging issues, which arises from that the denominator of tire side angle term only contains the vehicle longitudinal speed. Consequently, for the common low-speed and stop-start driving scenarios, the calculated tire slip angle will approach infinity, which will further lead to the numerical explosion of other vehicle states. In response to this critical challenge, we propose a discrete-time dynamic vehicle model that effectively mitigates the low-speed singularity issue, ensuring numerical stability and maintaining the explicit form-highly favored by model-based control algorithms. To validate the numerical stability of our model, we conduct a rigorous theoretical analysis, establishing sufficient conditions for stability, and conduct extensive empirical validation tests across a wide spectrum of speeds. Subsequent to the validation process, we conduct comprehensive simulations comparing our proposed model with both kinematic models and existing dynamic models discretized through the forward Euler method. The results demonstrate that our proposed model shows better comprehensive performance in terms of both the accuracy and numerical stability. Finally, the real vehicle experiments are carried out to support that our proposed model can closely aligns to the real vehicle trajectories showcasing its practicality and ease of use. Notably, our work stands as the pioneering endeavor in introducing an explicit discrete-time dynamic vehicle model suitable for common urban driving scenarios including low-speed and stop-start.