Abstract: Under the limiting tire-road condition, the lateral operating control performance of vehicles would deteriorate sharply, which increases the control difficulty of the autopilot system. The existing researches mainly focused on the performance of intelligent vehicle trajectory trace controls without considerations of the safety and stability of the vehicle under low traction road surface, emergency obstacle avoidance and other limiting operation conditions. A lateral motion control method for automated vehicles is proposed by using the model predictive control (MPC) framework, which can ensure the driving stability and safety of intelligent vehicles. Meanwhile the simulation test results also show that the designed controller has a strong robustness. The open loop optimal control problem is formulated by using quadratic cost function and squared safety envelope. The side-slip angles of both front and rear wheels are constrained as the safety envelope so as to ensure the vehicle stability under the limiting operation conditions. The research methods and results can provide a reference for intelligent vehicle design.

Key words: automatic steering, intelligent vehicles, tire dynamics, lateral stability, predictive control