Control Informed Design of the IAC Autonomous Racecar for Operation at the Dynamic Envelope

This article introduces the hardware-software co-design of the control system for an autonomy-enabled formula-style high-speed racecar that will be utilized as the deployment platform for high-level autonomy in the first ever head-to-head driverless race called the Indy Autonomous Challenge. The embedded control system needs to facilitate autonomous functionality, including perception, localization, and by-wire actuation, at high speeds and dynamic limits of the vehicle. Rapid maneuvering during the race, however, excites transient dynamics of the vehicle and the actuators. Compared to current autonomous driving focused on highway cruising and urban traffic, transient vehicle control imposes new challenges to the algorithm and system design. The presented work introduces the cascaded control structure employed by the IAC prototype to fully exploit the time scale separation between different control tasks. It is demonstrated by example way how the model-based control strategies and simulation are utilized to inform the decisions in the actuation, computation, perception, and software pipeline design decisions for the first-of-its-kind IAC racecar.