Search Results

Recently, the development of various driver assistance systems into today's vehicle have increased due to the availability of affordable advanced electronics. With this increase in electronic content on today's commercial vehicles, various opportunities for sensor fusion are opened up, primarily because the sensors are typically part of the ECU cluster, and always measuring either driver input, vehicle states and potentially the environment around the vehicle. Given the larger variance in vehicle mass and length for commercial vehicles, as opposed to passenger cars, sensor data integrity and robustness is important to assure that all the sensors are reporting the same information, so that safety-critical Driver Assistance Systems can intervene effectively and robustly.

The advancement of computer systems and simulation modeling tools have enabled control systems designers to reduce the development time and bring active safety system products to market faster. Modern tractor-trailers are becoming increasingly equipped with such active safety systems. More often than not, these tractor-trailers are designed to pull either a single trailer or multiple trailers in operation. One of such multiple trailer combinations are the B-Doubles combination, in which the fifth wheel coupling is located at the rear of the lead, trailer, which is mounted on the rear section located immediately above the lead trailer axles. Although this combination is less susceptible to lateral instability compared with an A-Train combination, it can still have exposure to roll instability. Hence, the application of a trailer roll stability system on the combination vehicle may prove beneficial to the roll stability.