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There is an increasing customer demand for adjustable chassis control features which enable adaption of the vehicle comfort and driving characteristics to the customer requirements. One of the most promising vehicle control systems which can be used to change the vehicle characteristics during the drive is the semi-active suspension system. This paper presents a Rule-Optimized Fuzzy Logic controller for semi-active suspension systems which can continuously adjust itself not only according to the road conditions but also to the driver requirements. The proposed controller offers three different control modes (Comfort, Normal and Sport) which can be switched by the driver during driving. The Comfort Mode minimizes the accelerations imposed on the driver and passengers by using a softer damping. On the other hand, the increased damping in Sport Mode provides better road holding capability, which is critical for sporty handling.

The knowledge of representative load collectives and duty cycles is crucial for designing and dimensioning vehicles and their components. For human driven vehicles, various methods are known for deriving these load spectra directly or indirectly from fleet measurement data of the customer vehicle operation. Due to the lack of market penetration of highly automated and autonomous vehicles, there is no sufficient fleet data available to utilize these methods. As a result of increased demand for ride comfort compared to human driven vehicles, autonomous vehicle operation promises reduced driving speeds as well as reduced lateral and longitudinal accelerations. This can consequently lead to decreasing operation loads, thus enabling potentially more light-weight, cost-effective, resource-saving and energy-efficient vehicle components.