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The rapid development of city traffic makes the driving conditions faced by vehicles increasingly complex. The drive-by-wire chassis vehicle has the characteristics of four-wheel independent steering, four-wheel independent drive and four-wheel independent braking, which has become a current research hotspot because that can meet various complex working conditions. However, it is precisely because of the high degree of controllability of the drive-by-wire chassis that the research on the control strategy has become difficult. In this paper, an integrated control strategy based on the hierarchical algorithm framework is designed for the drive-by-wire chassis vehicle, which includes a centralized control layer, a tire force distribution layer and an actuator control layer.

To address the current situation of the limited driver-vehicle cooperative steering actuation structure, this paper proposes a feasible driver-vehicle shared steering control actuation architecture based on the differential steering. Firstly, a shared steering execution architecture is established, which contains traditional steering system controlled by human driver and differential steering system acting as the automatic execution system. In this paper, a specific driver-vehicle shared control architecture is established with the front-wheel hub motor-based differential steering system and a single-view angle based human driver model. Then, an upper-level sliding mode controller for path tracking is developed and implemented as the automatic steering system, and the driver-vehicle shared control is achieved by the proposed non-cooperative game model.

This essay aims to develop an electrically controlled steering test bench and lay a solid foundation for the development of steering system. The first part mainly introduces the function, structure and working principle of the test bench. For the hardware system, it includes the steering system, fixture, sensors as well as a frameless disk motor for carrying out automatic motor input, and a dual linear motor system selected as the road resistance simulation actuator. As for the software, MATLAB/Simulink, CarSim, RTI and ControlDesk are used. Therefore, with the help of real-time simulation platform, researchers can not only build control strategy and dynamic model but also control the experiment and tune parameters in real-time. The second part of the essay aims to identify both electric and mechanical parameters of R-EPS system by carrying out tests on the proposed test bench. As parameters are successfully identified, the feasibility of the test bench is also verified.

With rapid development of the automobile industry and the growing maturity of the automotive electronic technologies, the distributed-traction electric vehicle with four-wheel-distributed steering/braking/traction systems is regarded as an important development direction. With its unique chassis structure, it is the ideal benchmark platform used to evaluate active safety systems. The distributed-traction electric vehicle with four-wheel-distributed steering system is essentially full drive-by-wire vehicle. With its flexible chassis layout and high control degrees-of-freedom, the full drive-by-wire electric vehicle acted as a kind of redundant system is an ideal platform for the research of integrated control. In this treatise, the longitudinal dynamics of the electric vehicle as well as its lateral and yaw motions are controlled simultaneously.

This paper presents a fault-tolerant control (FTC) algorithm for four-wheel independently driven and steered (4WID/4WIS) electric vehicle. The Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) algorithm is utilized in the fault detection (FD) module so as to estimate the in-wheel motor parameters, which could detect parameter variations caused by in-wheel motor fault. A motion controller based on sliding mode control (SMC) is able to compute the generalized forces/moments to follow the desired vehicle motion. By considering the tire adhesive limits, a reconfigurable control allocator optimally distributes the generalized forces/moments among healthy actuators so as to minimize the tire workloads once the actuator fault is detected. An actuator controller calculates the driving torques of the in-wheel motors and steering angles of the wheels in order to finally achieve the distributed tire forces. If one or more in-wheel motors lose efficacy, the FD module diagnoses the actuator failures first.

Electronically controlled air suspension (ECAS) systems have been widely used in commercial vehicles to improve the ride comfort and handling stability of vehicles, as it can adjust vehicle height according to the driving conditions and the driver's intent. In this paper, the vehicle height adjustment process of ECAS system is studied. A mathematical model of vehicle height adjustment is derived by combining vehicle dynamics theory and thermodynamics theory of variable mass system. Reasons lead to the problems of “over-charging”, “over-discharging” and oscillation during the process of height adjustment are analyzed. In order to solve these problems, a single neuron proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller is proposed to realize the accurate control of vehicle height. By simulation and semi-physical rig test, the effectiveness and performance of the proposed control algorithm are verified.

Aiming at estimating the vehicle mass and the position of center of gravity, an on-line two-stage estimator, based on the recursive least square method, is proposed for buses in this paper. Accurate information of the center of gravity position is crucial to vehicle control, especially for buses whose center of gravity position can be varied substantially because of the payload onboard. Considering that the buses start and stop frequently, the first stage of the estimator determines the bus total mass during acceleration, and the second stage utilizes the recursive least-square methods to estimate the position of the center of gravity during braking. The proposed estimator can be validated by the co-simulation with MATLAB/Simulink and TruckSim software, simulation results exhibit good convergence and stability, so the center of gravity position can be estimated through the proposed method in a certain accuracy range.

As a new form of electric vehicle, Four-wheel-independent electric vehicle with X-By-Wire (XBW) inherits all the advantages of in-wheel motor drive electric vehicles. The vehicle steering system is liberated from traditional mechanical steering mechanism and forms an advanced vehicle with all- wheel independent driving, braking and steering. Compared with conventional vehicles, it has more controllable degrees of freedom. The design of the integrated vehicle dynamics control systems helps to achieve the steering, driving and braking coordinated control and improves the vehicle's handling stability. In order to solve the problem of lacking of vehicle state information in the integrated control, some methods are used to estimate the vehicle state of four-wheel-independent electric vehicles with XBW. In order to improve the estimation accuracy, unscented Kalman filter (UKF) is used to estimate the vehicle state variables in this paper.

This paper presents a simultaneous longitudinal and lateral motion control strategy for a full drive-by-wire autonomous vehicle. A nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC) problem is formulated in which the nonlinear prediction model utilizes a spatial transformation to derive the dynamics of the vehicle about the reference trajectory, which facilitates the acquisition of the tracking errors at varying speeds. A reference speed profile generator is adopted by taking account of the road geometry information, such that the lateral stability is guaranteed and the lane guidance performance is improved. Finally, the nonlinear multi-variable optimization problem is simplified by considering only three motion control efforts, which are strictly confined within a convex set and are readily distributed to the four tires of a full drive-by-wire vehicle.

This paper presents an adaptive observer-based approach for the combined state estimation and active fault detection and isolation (FDI) of the individual-wheel-drive (IWD) vehicles. A 3-DOF vehicle model coupled with the Highway Safety Research Institute (HSRI) tire model is established and used as the observation model. Based on this model, the dual unscented Kalman filter (DUKF) technique is employed for the observer design to give fusion results of the interdependent state and parameter variables, which undergo nonlinear transformations, with the minimum square errors. Effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is examined and validated through co-simulation between MATLAB/Simulink and CarSim. The results demonstrate that the DUKF-based observer effectively filters the sensor signals, accurately obtains the longitudinal and lateral velocities, explicitly isolates the faulty wheel(s) and accurately estimates the actual torque(s) even with the presence of noise.

Nowadays active collision avoidance has become a major focus of research, and a variety of detection and tracking methods of obstacles in front of host vehicle have been applied to it. In this paper, laser radars are chosen as sensors to obtain relevant information, after which an algorithm used to detect and track vehicles in front is provided. The algorithm determines radar's ROI (Region of Interest), then uses a laser radar to scan the 2D space so as to obtain the information of the position and the distance of the targets which could be determined as obstacles. The information obtained will be filtered and then be transformed into cartesian coordinates, after that the coordinate point will be clustered so that the profile of the targets can be determined. A threshold will be set to judge whether the targets are obstacles or not. Last Kalman filter will be used for target tracking. To verify the presented algorithm, related experiments have been designed and carried out.

The passive fault-tolerant approach for four-wheel independently driven and steered (4WID/4WIS) electric vehicles has been investigated in this study. An adaptive control based passive fault-tolerant controller is designed to improve vehicle safety, performance and maneuverability when an actuator fault happens. The proposed fault tolerant control method consists of the following three parts: 1) a fault detection and diagnosis (FDD) module that monitors vehicle driving condition, detects and diagnoses actuator failures with the inequality constraints; 2) a motion controller that computes the generalized forces/moments to track the desired vehicle motion using Model Predictive Control (MPC); 3) a reconfigurable control allocator that redistributes the generalized forces/moments to four wheels with equality constrained optimization.

A full drive-by-wire electric vehicle, named Urban Future Electric Vehicle (UFEV) is developed, where the four wheels' traction and braking torques, four wheels' steering angles, and four active suspensions (in the future) are controlled independently. It is an ideal platform to realize the optimal vehicle dynamics, the marginal-stability and the energy-efficient control, it is also a platform for studying the advanced chassis control methods and their applications. A centralized control system of hierarchical structure for UFEV is proposed, which consist of Sensor Layer, Identification and Estimation Layer, Objective Control Layer, Forces and Motion Distribution Layer, Executive Layer. In the Identification and Estimation Layer, identification model is established by utilizing neural network algorithms to identify the driver characteristics. Vehicle state estimation and road identification of UFEV based on EKF and Fuzzy Logic Control methods is also conducted in this layer.

Nowadays, conventional steering system cannot meet consumers' requirements as their environmental awareness increasing. Electrically controlled steering system can solve this problem well [1] [2]. Electrically controlled steering system has been not only applied widely in automobile steering technique but also becomes an important section of automobile integrated chassis control technology. It is necessary for vehicles to test their every component repeatedly before every component assembled. So a test bench becomes an essential part for vehicle products' design and improvement. The electrically controlled steering system consists of Electric Power Steering system (EPS), Active Front Steering (AFS) and Steer by Wire (SBW). The similarity among them is containing pinion-and-rack mechanical structure, so it is viable to design a test bench suitable for these three systems. This paper takes EPS as a prototype to verify the design's availability.

This paper first presents an algorithm to detect tire blowout based on wheel speed sensor signals, which either reduces the cost for a TPMS or provides a backup in case it fails, and a tire blowout model considering different tire pressure is also built based on the UniTire model. The vehicle dynamic model uses commercial software CarSim. After detecting tire blowout, the active braking control, based on a 2DOF reference model, determines an optimal correcting yaw moment and the braking forces that slow down and stop the vehicle, based on a linear quadratic regulator. Then the braking force commands are further translated into target pressure command for each wheel cylinder to ensure the target braking forces are generated. Some simulations are conducted to verify the active control strategy.

Electronic braking system (EBS) of commercial vehicle is developed from ABS to enhance the brake performance. Based on the early development of controller hardware, this paper starts with an analysis of the definition of EBS. It aims at the software design of electronic control unit, and makes it compiled into the controller in the form of C language by the in-depth study about control strategy of EBS in different braking conditions. Designed controller software is divided into two layers. The upper control strategy includes the recognition algorithm of driver's braking intention, estimation algorithm of the vehicle state, conventional braking strategy which consists of the algorithm of deceleration control and braking force distribution, and emergency braking strategy which consists of the algorithm of brake assist control and ABS control.

The hybrid electric city bus, which consists of the electric motor and battery, is obviously different from the traditional buses. This paper focuses on optimizing the characteristics of the automatic mechanical transmission in hybrid electric city bus and does the following studies: firstly, in order to reduce the fuel consumption, the transmission ratio and some structural parameters are optimized with CRUISE software; secondly, the volume and weight of the transmission structure is reduced and optimized by numerical optimization approach, with the limitation of the structural reliability.

The simulation of electro-pneumatic components used in brake systems of commercial vehicles is of great importance in order to understand their characteristics for developing a control logic and improve the braking performance. As the goal of improving the performance of the commercial vehicle pneumatic EBS(Electronically controlled Braking System), static and dynamic characteristics of proportional relay valve for commercial vehicle pneumatic EBS have been simulated by using MATLAB/Simulink environment and validated by testing on hardware-in-the-loop test bench focused on its pressure hysteresis characteristic. The simulation and test results show that the mathematic model for proportional relay valve characteristics is reasonable and reliable, and this simulation tool can be used for research and developing of pneumatic EBS system for commercial vehicle effectively.

A new road feel feedback control design of steer-by-wire (SBW) is proposed, which is produce the steering feel of conventional vehicle with equipped electronic power steering (EPS) system, due to SBW system removes mechanical linkages between steering system and front wheels. A dynamic model is established to study the road feel generation and deal with the need of computed rack force of steer system. Based on the analysis of the assisting characteristic and the active damping control strategy of the EPS system, an integrated road feel algorithm is proposed. For rack force is difficult to measure, an estimator is presented to estimate rack force by Kalman filter (KF). The hardware-in-the-loop simulation (HILS) test bench results show that the proposed road feel control design make drivers get road feel information and SBW system can improve the vehicle maneuverability and comfortably.

A fault detection and diagnosis (FDD) algorithm of 4WID/4WIS Electric Vehicles has been proposed in this study aiming to find the actuator faults. The 4WID/4WIS EV is one of the promising architectures for electric vehicle designs which is driven independently by four in-wheel motors and steered independently by four steering motors. The 4WID/4WIS EVs have many potential abilities in advanced vehicle control technologies, but diagnosis and accommodation of the actuator faults becomes a significant issue. The proposed FDD approach is an important part of the active fault tolerant control (AFTC) algorithm. The main objective of the FDD approach is to monitor vehicle states, find the faulty driving motor and then feedback fault information to the controller which would adopt appropriate control laws to accommodate the post-fault vehicle control system.