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A method to improve the computational efficiency of analyzing wheeled vehicle systems on three-dimensional (3-D) roads has been developed. This was accomplished by creating a technique to incorporate the tire on a 3-D road in a multibody dynamics model of the vehicle with an approach that formulates the governing equations using symbolic formulation. For general handling analysis performed on the vehicle, the tire forces and moments are determined using a tire model that represents the tire as a set of mathematical expressions. Since these expressions need numerical values to determine the forces and moments, a symbolic solution does not exist. Therefore, the evaluation of the tire forces and moments needs to be done during simulation. However, symbolic operations can be used when the governing equations are formulated to develop an efficient method to evaluate these forces.

A control algorithm is developed for active/semi-active suspensions which can provide more comfort and better handling simultaneously. A weighting parameter is tuned online which is derived from two components - slow and fast adaptation to assign weights to comfort and handling. After establishing through simulations that the proposed adaptive control algorithm can demonstrate a performance better than some controllers in prior-art, it is implemented on an actual vehicle (Cadillac STS) which is equipped with MR dampers and several sensors. The vehicle is tested on smooth and rough roads and over speed bumps.

In the field of active safety, the active four-wheel-steering (4WS) system seems to be an attractive alternative and an effective tool to improve the vehicles' handling stability in lane-keeping control performance. Under normal using condition, the vehicle's lateral acceleration is comparatively small, and the mathematic relationship between the small side force excitation and the small slip angle of the tire is in the linear region. Furthermore, the effects of roll, heave, and pitch motions are neglected as well as the dynamic characteristics of the tires and suspension system in this work. Therefore, the linear quadratic control (LQC) theory is used to ensure that the output of the 4WS control system can keep track of the desired yaw rate and zero-sideslip-angle response can also be realized at the same time.

In this paper, a consensus framework for cooperative parameter estimation within the vehicular network is presented. It is assumed that each vehicle is equipped with a dedicated short range communication (DSRC) device and connected to other vehicles. The improvement achieved by the consensus for parameter estimation in presence of sensor’s noise is studied, and the effects of network nodes and edges on the consensus performance is discussed. Finally, the simulation results of the introduced cooperative estimation algorithm for estimation of the unknown parameter of road condition is presented. It is shown that due to the faster dynamic of network communication, single agents’ estimation converges to the least square approximation of the unknown parameter properly.

Forecasting the motion of the leading vehicle is a critical task for connected autonomous vehicles as it provides an efficient way to model the leading-following vehicle behavior and analyze the interactions. In this study, a personalized time-series modeling approach for leading vehicle trajectory prediction considering different driving styles is proposed. The method enables a precise, personalized trajectory prediction for leading vehicles with limited inter-vehicle communication signals, such as vehicle speed, acceleration, space headway, and time headway of the front vehicles. Based on the learning nature of human beings that a human always tries to solve problems based on grouping and similar experience, three different driving styles are first recognized based on an unsupervised clustering with a Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM).

At present, many electric vehicles are often equipped with only a single-stage final drive. Although the single-stage speed ratio can meet the general driving requirements of electric vehicles, if the requirements of the maximum speed and the requirements for starting acceleration or climbing are met at the same time, the power demand of the drive motor is relatively large, and the efficient area of the drive motor may be far away from the operating area corresponding to daily driving. If the two-speed automatic transmission is adopted, the vehicle can meet the requirements of maximum speed, starting acceleration and climbing at the same time, reduce the power demand of the driving motor, and improve the economy under certain power performance. This is especially important for medium and large vehicles.

How to improve the measurement accuracy of road gradient is the key content of the research on the speed warning of commercial vehicles in mountainous roads. The large error of the measurement causes a significant effect of the vehicle speed threshold, which causes a risk to the vehicle's safety. Conventional measuring instruments such as accelerometers and gyroscopes generally have noise fluctuation interference or time accumulation error, resulting in large measurement errors. To solve this problem, the Kalman filter method is used to reduce the interference of unwanted signals, thereby improving the accuracy of the slope measurement. However, the Kalman filtering method is limited by the estimation error of various parameters, and the filtering effect is difficult to meet the project research requirements.

The drivability plays an important role for marketability and competitiveness of passenger car in meeting some customer requirements, which directly affects the driving experience and the desire of purchasing. In this paper, a framework of objective drivability evaluation with multi-source information fusion for passenger car is proposed. At first, according to vehicle powertrain system and optimization theory, certain vehicle performances, which are closely related to objective drivability are analyzed, including vehicle longitudinal acceleration, vehicle speed, engine torque, engine speed, gear position, accelerator pedal, brake signal and voltage signal. Then, combined with the evaluation criterion of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), mean error (ME), root mean squared error (RMSE) and signal smoothness (SS), a de-noising method is developed for the drivability evaluation information.

In ITS, image processing technology is applied to a wide variety of areas such as visual-based intelligent vehicle navigation, visual-based traffic monitoring and visual-based traffic management. In the recognition system of the vehicle body characteristics, most of the recognition is the license plate and the car emblem, etc. This paper proposes an image recognition application method for the vertical motion of the car while driving, mainly including vertical height detection and vertical displacement velocity acceleration recognition. The edge detection model of the image object is established by using the gray image to obtain the car motion segmentation image. At the same time, an image length and actual length coordinate conversion model is established, which can calculate an arbitrary actual length of the image object. In this paper, Yuejin Shangjun X500 van was selected as the test vehicle, and the video data was captured with a camera.

In vehicles equipped with conventional Electric Power Steering (EPS) systems, the steering effort felt by the driver can be unreasonably low when driving on slippery roads. This may lead inexperienced drivers to steer more than what is required in a turn and risk losing control of the vehicle. Thus, it is sensible for tire-road friction to be accounted for in the design of future EPS systems. This paper describes the design of an auxiliary EPS controller that manipulates torque delivery of current EPS systems by supplying its motor with a compensation current controlled by a fuzzy logic algorithm that considers tire-road friction among other factors. Moreover, a steering system model, a nonlinear vehicle dynamics model and a Dugoff tire model are developed in MATLAB/Simulink. Physical testing is conducted to validate the virtual model and confirm that steering torque decreases considerably on low friction roads.

Ride performance characteristics of a road vehicle involving different suspension system layouts are investigated. The suspension layouts consist of conventional rectangular 4-wheel, novel diamond-shaped 4-wheel, triangular 3-wheel and inverse-triangular 3-wheel. A generalized full-vehicle model integrating different suspension system layouts is formulated. The fundamental suspension properties are compared in terms of bounce-, roll- and pitch-mode. The ride dynamic responses and power consumption characteristics are explored under two measured road roughness excitations and a range of vehicle speeds. The results demonstrate that the novel diamond-shaped suspension system layout could yield significantly enhanced vehicle ride performance in an energy-saving manner.

The mountainous roads are rugged and complex, so that the driver can not make accurate judgments on dangerous road conditions. In addition, most heavy vehicles have characteristics of large weight and high center of gravity. The two factors above have caused most of the car accidents in mountain areas. A research shows that 90% of car accidents can be avoided if drivers can respond within 2-3 seconds before the accidents happen. This paper proposes a speed warning scheme for heavy-duty vehicle over the horizon in mountainous area, which can give the drivers enough time to respond to the danger. In the early warning aspect, this system combines the front road information, the vehicle characteristics and real-time information obtained from the vehicle, calculates and forecasts the danger that may happen over the horizon ahead of time, and prompts the driver to control the vehicle speed.

Typical vehicle speed deceleration occurs at the freeway exit due to the driving direction change. Well conducting the driver to control the velocity could enhance the vehicle maneuverability and give drivers more response time when running into potential dangerous conditions. The freeway exit speed limit sign (ESLS) is an effect way to remind the driver to slow down the vehicle. The ESLS visibility is significant to guarantee the driving safety. This research focuses on the color variable ESLS system, which is placed at the same location with the traditional speed limit sign. With this system, the driver could receive the updated speed limit recommendation in advance and without distraction produced by eyes contract change over the dashboard and the front sight. First, the mathematical model of the drivetrain and the engine brake is built for typical motor vehicles. The vehicle braking characteristics with various initial speeds in the deceleration area are studied.

Mountain road winding and bumpy, traffic accidents caused by speeding frequently happened, mainly concentrated on curves. The present curve warning system research are based on Charge-coupled Device, but the existing obstacles, weather , driving at night and road conditions directly affect the accuracy and applicability. The research is of predictability to identify the curves based on the geographic information and can told the driver road information and safety speed ahead of the road according to the commercial vehicle characteristic of load, and the characteristics of the mass center to reduce the incidence of accidents. In this paper, the main research contents include: to estimate forward bend curvature through the node classification method based on the digital map.

Road traffic congestion sometimes happens at tunnel exit even without high traffic flow. One reason is that the deceleration process is imperceptible when the vehicle is driving to the tunnel exit with gradual upgrade slopes. Nowadays regulations are more concentrated in transport sectors, and control measures are applied to vehicles through the tunnel. This process is careless of vehicles’ specific characteristics and easily distract the driver attention. In this paper, a tunnel climbing acceleration reminder system is introduced. When the speed drop is detected and the analysis show this is due to the driver's unconscious behavior, the system will remind the driver to speed up. Based on the dynamic model and the tunnel properties, the relationship between the throttle opening degrees and the duration with the speed change is studied. Then, the engine braking is considered for the variation of speeds and slopes.

Studies show that driving in foggy environment is a security risk, and when driving in foggy environment, the drivers are easy to accelerate unconsciously. The safety information prompted to the driver is mainly from fog lights, road warning signs and the traffic radio. In order to increase the quality of the safety tips to prevent drivers from unintended acceleration and ensure the security of driving in foggy environment, the study proposes a safety speed assessment method for driving in foggy environment, combining the information of driving environment, vehicle’s speed and the multimedia system. The method uses camera which is installed on the front windshield pillar to collect the image about the environment, and uses the dark channel prior theory to calculate the visibility. And by using the environment visibility, the safety speed can be calculated based on the kinematics theory. And it is appropriate for vehicles which have different braking performance.

Automotive Front Lighting System(AFS) can receive the steering signal and the vehicular speed signal to adjust the position of headlamps automatically. AFS will provide drivers more information of front road to protect drivers safe when driving at night. AFS works when there is a steering signal input. However, drivers often need the front road's information before they turn the steering wheel when vehicles are going to go through a sharp corner, AFS will not work in such a situation. This paper studied how to optimize the working time of AFS based on GIS (Geographic Information System) and GPS(Geographic Information System) to solve the problem. This paper analyzed the process of the vehicle is about to go through a corner. Low beams and high beams were discussed respectively.

This research is based on the Controller Area Network (CAN) bus, and briefly analyzed its communication protocol with reference to the layered model of Open System Interconnect Reference Model (OSI). Subsequently, a data acquisition system was designed and developed including a Vehicle Communication Interface (VCI) and a laptop. After the overall architecture was built, the communication mechanism of the VCI was studied. Furthermore, the lap top app was built using the layered design followed by the implementation of a scheme for data collection and experimentation involving the test driving of a real car on road. Finally, the driving style was identified by means of fuzzy reasoning and solving ambiguity based on fuzzy theory; via training the acceleration sample and forecast using the excellent learning and generalization ability of Support Vector Machine (SVM) for high-dimensional, finite samples.

H-Bahn ("hanging railway") refers to the suspended, unmanned urban railway transportation system. Through the reasonable platform layout, H-Bahn can be easily integrated into the existing urban transit system. With the development of urban roads, the associated rail facilities can be conveniently disassembled, moved and expanded. The track beam, circuits, communication equipment, and sound insulation screen are all installed in a box-type track beam so that the system can achieve a high level of integration and intelligence. The carriage of the modern H-banh vehicle is connected with the bogies by two hanging devices. The vehicle is always running in the box-type track beam; therefore there are less possibilities of derailment. Consequently, the key work focuses on the running stability evaluation and curve negotiation performance analysis.

This paper presents a novel application of hydraulic electromagnetic energy-regenerative shock absorber (HESA) into commercial vehicle suspension system and vehicle road performance are simulated by the evaluating indexes (e.g. root-mean-square values of vertical acceleration of sprung mass, dynamic tire-ground contact force, suspension deflection and harvested power; maximum values of pitch angle and roll angle). Firstly, the configuration and working principle of HESA are introduced. Then, the damping characteristics of HESA and the seven-degrees-of-freedom vehicle dynamics were modeled respectively before deriving the dynamic characteristics of a vehicle equipped with HESA. The control current is fixed at 7A to match the similar damping effect of traditional damper on the basis of energy conversion method of nonlinear shock absorber.