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A rapid path-planning algorithm that generates drivable paths for an autonomous vehicle operating in structural road is proposed in this paper. Cubic B-spline curve is adopted to generating smooth path for continuous curvature and, more, parametric basic points of the spline is adjusted to controlling the curvature extremum for kinematic constraints on vehicle. Other than previous approaches such as inverse kinematics, model-based prediction postprocess approach or closed-loop forward simulation, using the kinematics model in each iteration of path for smoothing and controlling curvature leading to time consumption increasing, our method characterized the vehicle curvature constraint by the minimum length of segment line, which synchronously realized constraint and smooth for generating path. And Differ from the path of robot escaping from a maze, the intelligent vehicle traveling on road in structured environments needs to meet the traffic rules.

Velocity is one of the most important inputs of active safety systems such as ABS, TCS, ESC, ACC, AEB et al. In a distributed drive electric vehicle equipped with four in-wheel motors, velocity is hard to obtain due to all-wheel drive, especially in wheel slipping conditions. This paper focus on longitudinal velocity estimation of the distributed drive electric vehicle. Firstly, a basic longitudinal velocity estimation method is built based on a typical Kalman filter, where four wheel speeds obtained by wheel speed sensors constitute an observation variable and the longitudinal acceleration measured by an inertia moment unit is chosen as input variable. In simulations, the typical Kalman filter show good results when no wheel slips; when one or more wheels slip, the typical Kalman filter with constant covariance matrices does not work well. Therefore, a gain matrix adjusting Kalman filter which can detect the wheel slip and cope with that is proposed.

Steering of skid-steered vehicles without steering mechanism is realized by differential drive/brake torque generated from in-wheel motors at left and right sides. Compared to traditional Ackerman-steered vehicles, skid-steered vehicles consume much more energy while steering due to greater steering resistance. Torque allocation is critical to the distributed drive skid-steered vehicles, since it influences not only steering performance, but also energy efficiency. In this paper, the dynamic characteristics of six-wheeled skid-steered vehicles were analyzed, and a 2-DOF vehicle model was established, which is important for both motion tracking control and torque allocation. Furthermore, a hierarchical controller was proposed. Considering tire force characteristics and tire slip, the upper layer calculates the generalized force and desired yaw moment based on anti-windup PI (proportion-integral) control method.

Two control strategies, safety preferred control and master cylinder oscillation control, were designed for anti-lock braking on a novel integrated-electro-hydraulic braking system (I-EHB) which has only four solenoid valves in its innovative hydraulic control unit (HCU) instead of eight in a traditional one. The main idea of safety preferred control is to reduce the hydraulic pressure provided by the motor in the master cylinder whenever a wheel tends to be locking even if some of the other wheels may need more braking torque. In contrast, regarding master cylinder oscillation control, a sinusoidal signal is given to the motor making the hydraulic pressure in the master cylinder oscillate in certain frequency and amplitude. Hardware-in-the-loop simulations were conducted to verify the effectiveness of the two control strategies mentioned above and to evaluate them.

For an electric vehicle driven by four in-wheel motors, the torque of each wheel can be controlled precisely and independently. A closed-loop control method of differential drive assisted steering (DDAS) has been proposed to improve vehicle steering properties based on those advantages. With consideration of acceleration requirement, a three dimensional characteristic curve that indicates the relation between torque and angle of the steering wheel at different vehicle speeds was designed as a basis of the control system. In order to deal with the saturation of motor's output torque under certain conditions, an anti-windup PI control algorithm was designed. Simulations and vehicle tests, including pivot steering test, lemniscate test and central steering test were carried out to verify the performance of the DDAS in steering portability and road feeling.

This paper describes a methodology to estimate yaw rate of a 4-wheel-drive electric vehicle, in which wheel driven torque can be independently controlled by electric motor. Without non-driven wheels it would be difficult to estimate the vehicle yaw rate precisely, especially when some of the four wheels have large slip ratio. Therefore, a model based estimation methodology is put forward, which uses four wheel speeds, steering wheel angle and vehicle lateral acceleration as input signals. Firstly the yaw rate is estimated through three different ways considering both vehicle kinematics and vehicle dynamics. Vehicle kinematics based method has good estimation accuracy even when the vehicle has large lateral acceleration. However, it can not provide satisfying results when the wheel has large slip ratio. In contrast, vehicle dynamics based method is not so sensitive to wheel slip ratio.

The prevention and control of brake judder and its various negative effects has been a key target of vehicle production. One of the effects is the steering wheel vibration during vehicle braking. Experimental and theoretical investigation into “steering wheel vibration due to brake judder” is extensively presented in this paper. The vehicle road test is carried out under controlled braking conditions. During the test, the accelerations of brake caliper assembly, suspension low and upper control arm, steering arm, tie rod and steering wheel, left and right wheel rotary speed, are measured by a multi-channel data acquisition system. The data processing focuses on order tracking analysis and transfer path analysis to work out the related resonant components. A disc brake assembly, with deliberately designed disc thickness variation and surface run-out combinations, is tested on a brake dynamometer.