Search Results

Tracking vehicle trajectories is essential for autonomous vehicles and advanced driver-assistance systems to understand traffic environment and evaluate collision risk. In order to reduce the position deviation and fluctuation of tracking on-road vehicle by millimeter-wave radar (MMWR), an interactive multi-model Kalman filter (IMM-KF) tracking algorithm including data association and track management is proposed. In general, it is difficult to model the target vehicle accurately due to lack of vehicle kinematics parameters, like wheel base, uncertainty of driving behavior and limitation of sensor’s field of view. To handle the uncertainty problem, an interacting multiple model (IMM) approach using Kalman filters is employed to estimate multitarget’s states. Then the compensation of radar ego motion is achieved, since the original measurement is under the radar polar coordinate system.

Multi-sensor information fusion framework is the eyes for unmanned driving and Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS) to perceive the surrounding environment. In addition to the perception of the surrounding environment, real-time vehicle localization is also the key and difficult point of unmanned driving technology. The disappearance of high-precision GPS signal suddenly and defect of the lane line will bring much more difficult and dangerous for vehicle localization when the vehicle is on unmanned driving. In this paper, a road boundary feature extraction algorithm is proposed based on multi-sensor information fusion of automotive radar and vision to realize the auxiliary localization of vehicles. Firstly, we designed a 79GHz (78-81GHz) Ultra-Wide Band (UWB) millimeter-wave radar, which can obtain the point cloud information of road boundary features such as guardrail or green belt and so on.

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.

The price of fossil fuels and the increasing inexorable energy crisis have become vital issues for everyone. Tongji University EconoPower Racing Team was established to participate in the “Honda EconoPower Cup” annually. Every contestant in the competition must finish a certain distance in the fixed time, with the gasoline supplied by the committee. After that the committee will measure the fuel consumption of every team and calculate the distance per liter fuel (the farther the better) to determine the champion. In order to enhance the EP vehicle's achievement we've made some improvements, such as framework, body, engine's optimization and so on. In this passage we mainly state some details of our research approaches in framework, steering, transmission, shape and driving strategy. The main technologies were: friction reduction, lightweight, enhancement of power train efficiency, tire selection and driving strategy.

Electric Power Steering (EPS) is the actuator of several lateral-dynamic-related Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS). A driving simulator with EPS will be much helpful for the ADAS development. However, if a real EPS is used in the driving simulator, it is quite difficult to realize the road reaction force accurately and responsively. To overcome this weakness, a virtual EPS platform is established. The virtual EPS platform contains two parts: one is the vehicle and EPS model, the other is the force feedback actuator (FFA) of the Steer-by-Wire (SBW) system. The FFA is an interface between the driver and the EPS/vehicle model. The reactive torque of the FFA is obtained based on the models. Meanwhile, the input of the EPS model is the steering angle of the FFA. Comparing to a real EPS, the virtual EPS platform has a problem of instability because of the actuator lag of the FFA. Therefore, a damping control method is applied to make the system stable.

Path tracking is the rudimentary capability and primary task for autonomous ground vehicles (AGVs). In this paper, a novel four-wheel-independent-steering (4WIS) and four-wheel-independent-drive (4WID) electric vehicle (EV) is proposed which is equipped with steer-by-wire (SBW) system. For path-tracking controller design, the nonlinear vehicle model with 2 degrees of freedom (DOF) is built utilizing the nonlinear Dugoff tire model. The nonlinear dynamic model of SBW system is conducted as well considering the external disturbances. As to the path-tracking controller design, an integrated four-wheel steering (4WS) and direct yaw-moment control (DYC) system is designed based on the model predictive control (MPC) algorithm to track the target path described by desired yaw angle and lateral displacement. Then, the fast terminal sliding mode controller (FTSMC) is proposed for the SBW system to suppress disturbances.

In the recent years, the interaction between human driver and Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS) has gradually aroused people’s concern. As a result, the concept of personalized ADAS is being put forward. As an important system of ADAS, Lane Keeping Assistance System (LKAS) also attracts great attention. To achieve personalized LKAS, driver lane keeping characteristic (DLKC) indices which could distinguish different driver lane keeping behavior should be researched. However, there are few researches on DLKC indices for personalized LKAS. Although there are many researches on modeling driver steering behavior, these researches are not sufficient to obtain DLKC indices. One reason is that most of researches are for double lane change behavior which is different from driver lane keeping behavior. The other reason is that the researches on driver lane keeping behavior only provide model structure and rarely discuss identification procedure such as how to select suitable data.

The electromagnetic valve actuator (EMVA) is considered a technological solution for decoupling between crankshaft and camshaft to improve engine performance, emissions, and fuel efficiency. Conventional EMVA consists of two electromagnets, an armature, and two springs has been proved to have the drawbacks of fixed lift, impact noise, complex control method and large power consumption. This paper proposes a new type of EMVA that uses voice coil motor (VCM) as electromagnetic valve actuator. This new camless valvetrain (VEMA) is characterized by simple structure, flexible controllable and low actuating power. VCM provides an almost flat force versus stroke curve that is very useful for high precision trajectory control to achieve soft landing within simple control algorithm.

Vehicle sideslip angle is significant for electronic stability control devices and hard to estimate due to the nonlinear and uncertain vehicle and tire dynamics. In this paper, based on the two track vehicle dynamic model considering the tire pneumatic trail variation, the vehicle sideslip angle estimation method was proposed. First, the extra steering angle of each wheel caused by kinematics and compliance characteristics of the steering system and suspension system was analyzed. The steering angle estimation method was designed. Since the pneumatic trail would vary with different tire slip angle, distances between the center of gravity (COG) and front&rear axle also change with the tire slip angle. Then, based on the dynamic pneumatic trail and estimated steering angle, we modified the traditional two track vehicle dynamic model using a brush tire model. This model matches the vehicle dynamics more accurately.

The coordinated control of stability and steering systems in collision avoidance steering evasion has been widely studied in vehicle active safety area, but the studies are mainly aimed at autonomous vehicle without driver or conventional combustion engine vehicle. This paper focuses on the control of hybrid vehicle integrated with rear hub in emergency steering evasion situation, and considering the driver’s characteristics. First, the mathematics model of vehicle dynamics and driver has been given. Second, based on the planned steering evasion path, the model predictive control method is presented for achieving higher evasion path tracking accuracy under driver’s steering input. The prediction model includes an adaptive preview distance driver model and a vehicle dynamics model to predict the driver input and the vehicle trajectory.

As one of the key technologies in autonomous driving, the lateral planning module guides the lateral movement during the driving process. An integrated lateral planning module should consider the non-holonomic constraints of a vehicle, the optimization of the generated trajectory and the applicability to various scenarios. However, the current lateral planning methods can only meet parts of these requirements. In order to satisfy all the performance requirements above, a novel Potential Field (PF) based lateral planning method is proposed in this paper. Firstly, a PF model is built to describe the potential risk of the traffic entities, including the obstacles, road boundaries and lines. The potential fields of these traffic entities are determined by their properties and the traffic regulations. Secondly, the planning algorithm is presented, which comprises three modules: state prediction, state search and trajectory generation.

Aiming at the test safety problems in the early stage of self-driving cars development, firstly the virtual vehicle on-board CAN data acquisition module of the present project was designed based on virtual LabVIEW. Then a wireless remote control system for the self-driving car was constructed, which integrated the built virtual vehicle on-board CAN data acquisition system, the remote real-time image monitoring module and the remote upper computer control module based on ZigBee wireless transmission. It can execute the environmental awareness training and continuous and complex motion manipulation testing of the vehicle without relying on the driver, which can solve the safety problems in the tests of initial development of self-driving cars. Finally, the four-wheel independent steering electric vehicle was used as the self-driving test vehicle, and the wireless remote control system was tested on the double lane change type path and S-type path.

The intersection is recognized as the most dangerous area because of the restricted road structures and indeterminate traffic regulations. Therefore, according to the Vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication, Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), and Digital Twin data, we present a potential energy field method to establish the general characteristics of intersection traffic safety, evaluate the safety situation of intersection and assist intersection traffic participants in passing through the intersection safer and more efficient. The resulting potential energy field method is established by the contour line of traffic participants' potential energy, which is constructed as a superposition of disparate energies, such as boundary potential energy, body potential energy, and velocity potential energy. The intersection traffic safety is evaluated by the potential energy field characteristic of simultaneous intersection traffic participants.

A tractor-trailer vehicle (TTV) consists of an actuated tractor attached with several full trailers. Because of its nonlinear and noncompleted constraints, it is a challenging task to avoid collisions for path planner. In this paper, we propose an efficient method to plan an optimal trajectory for TTV to reach the destination without any collision. To deal with the complicated constraints, the trajectory planning problem is formulated as an optimal control problem uniformly, which can be solved by the interior point method. A novel incremental optimization solving algorithm (IOSA) is proposed to accelerate the optimization process, which makes the number of trailers and the size of obstacles increase asynchronously. Simulation experiments are carried out in two scenarios with static obstacles. Compared with other methods, the results show that the planning method with IOSA outperforms in the efficiency.

Shift quality is an important indicator to measure the performance of dual-clutch transmissions (DCT). To obtain optimal driving comfort and reduce the vehicle jerk as much as possible, this paper proposes an integrated gearshift controller to control the engine and the on-coming clutch in inertia phase. First of all, a dynamic model of DCT during gearshift is established. Key factors determining shift quality are analyzed. In order to reduce the vehicle jerk, a reference trajectory of the engine speed and the derivative of the desired torque transferred by the on-coming clutch in inertia phase are programmed respectively. A back-stepping sliding mode controller (BPSMC) is designed to make the actual engine speed track the reference trajectory and an incremental proportional-integrative (PI) controller is designed to make the actual clutch torque to track the desired clutch torque.

Since data processing methods could not completely eliminate the uncertainty of signals, it is a key issue for stable and robust decision-making for uncertainty tolerance of intelligent vehicles. In this paper, a decision-making for an Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB) case considering the uncertainty of road adhesion coefficient estimation (RACE) is proposed. Firstly, the 3σ criterion is employed to classify the confidence in order to establish the decision-making mechanism considering the signal uncertainty of RACE. Secondly, the model for AEB with the uncertainty of the road adhesion coefficient estimated is designed based on the Seungwuk Moon model. Thirdly, a CCRs and CCRm scenario was designed to verify the feasibility in reference to the European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP) standard. Finally, the results of 10,000 cycles test illustrate that the proposed method is stable and could significantly improve the safety confidence both in the CCRs and CCRm scenarios.

Since situational awareness is crucial for autonomous driving in urban environments, multi-target tracking has become an increasingly popular research topic during the last several years. For autonomous driving in urban environments, cars and pedestrians are the two main types of obstacles, and their motion characteristics are not the same. While in the current related multi-target tracking research, the same motion model (such as Constant Velocity model [CV]) or motion model set (such as CV combined with Constant Acceleration model [CA]) is mostly used to track different types of obstacles simultaneously. Besides, in current research, regular motion models are mostly adopted to track pedestrians, such as CV, CA, and so on, the uncertainty in pedestrian motion is not well considered.

As a critical technology for autonomous vehicles, high precise positioning is essential for automated container terminals to implement intelligent dispatching and to improve container transport efficiency. Because of the unstable performance of global positioning system (GPS) in some circumstances, an ultra wide band (UWB) positioning system is developed for autonomous trucks in an automated container terminal. In this paper, an asynchronous structure is adopted in the system, and a three-dimensional (3D) localization method is proposed. Other than a traditional UWB positioning system with a server, in this asynchronous system, positions are calculated in the vehicle. Therefore, propagation delays from the server to vehicles are eliminated, and the real-time performance can be significantly improved. Traditional 3D localization methods based on time difference of arrival (TDOA) are mostly invalid with anchors in the same plane.

Safety is the cornerstone for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and Autonomous Driving Systems (ADS). To assess the safety of a traffic situation, it is essential to predict motion states of traffic participants in the future with mathematic models. Accurate vehicle trajectory prediction is an important prerequisite for reasonable traffic situation risk assessment and appropriate decision making. Vehicle trajectory prediction methods can be generally divided into motion model based methods and maneuver model based methods. Vehicle trajectory prediction based on motion models can be accurate and reliable only in the short term. While vehicle trajectory prediction based on maneuver models present more satisfactory performance in the long term, these maneuver models rely on machine learning methods. Abundant data should be collected to train the maneuver recognition model, which increases complexity and lowers real-time performance.

Autonomous vehicle performance is increasingly highlighted in many highway driving scenarios, which leads to more priorities to vehicle stability as well as tracking accuracy. In this paper, a nonlinear model predictive controller for autonomous vehicle trajectory tracking is designed and verified through a real-time simulation bench of a virtual test track. The dynamic stability constraints of nonlinear model predictive control (NLMPC) are obtained by a novel quadrilateral stability region criterion instead of the conventional phase plane method using the double-line region. First, a typical lane change scene of overtaking is selected and a new composited trajectory model is proposed as a reference path that combines smoothness of sine wave and comfort of linear functional path. Reference lateral velocity, azimuth angle, yaw rate, and front wheel steering angle are subsequently taken into account.