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In this paper, a novel method is proposed to establish the vehicle yaw stability criterion based on the sideslip angle-yaw rate (β-r) phase plane method. First, nonlinear two degrees of freedom vehicle analysis model is established by adopting the Magic Formula of nonlinear tire model. Then, according to the model in the Matlab/Simulink environment, the β-r phase plane is gained. Emphatically, the effects of different driving conditions (front wheels steering angle, road adhesion coefficient and speed) on the stability boundaries of the phase plane are analyzed. Through a large number of simulation analysis, results show that there are two types of phase plane: curve stability region and diamond stability region, and the judgment method of the vehicle stability domain type under different driving conditions is solved.

Vehicle sideslip angle estimation is of great importance to the vehicle stability control as it could not be measured directly by ordinary vehicle-mounted sensors. As a result, researchers worldwide have carried out comprehensive research in estimating the vehicle sideslip angle. First, as the attitude would affect the acceleration information measured by the IMU directly, different kinds of vehicle attitude estimation methods with multi-sensor fusion are presented. Then, the estimation algorithms of the vehicle sideslip angle are classified into the following three aspects: kinematic model based method, dynamic model based method, and fusion method. The characteristics of different estimation algorithms are also discussed. Finally, the conclusion and development trend of the sideslip angle estimation are prospected.

Torque Vectoring Control for distributed drive electric vehicle is studied. A handling improvement algorithm for normal cornering maneuvers is proposed based on state variable feedback control: Yaw rate feedback together with steer angle feedforward is employed to improve transient response and steady gain of the yaw rate, respectively. According to the feedback coefficient's influence on the transient response, an optimization function is proposed to obtain optimum feedback coefficients under different speeds. After maximum feedforward coefficients under different speeds are obtained from the constraint of the motor exterior characteristic, final feedforward coefficients are calculated according to an optimal steering characteristic. A torque distribution algorithm is presented to help the driver to speed up during the direct yaw moment control.

In this paper, a speed tracking controller is designed for the All-terrain vehicles. The method of feedforward with state variable feedback based on conditional integrators is adopted by the proposed control algorithm. The feedforward is designed considering the influence of the road slope on the longitudinal dynamics, which makes the All-terrain vehicles satisfy the acceleration demand of the upper controller when it tracks the desired speed on the road with slope varying greatly. The road slope is estimated based on a combined kinematic and dynamic model. This method solves the problem that road slope estimation requires an accurate vehicle dynamic model and are susceptible to acceleration sensor bias. Based on the vehicle dynamic model and the nonlinear tire model, the method of conditional integration is used in the state variable feedback, which considers the saturation constraint of the actuator with the intention of preventing the divergent integral operation.

As one of the essential parts of automatic parking system (APS), the parking motion control module directly affects the system performance and driver experience. Therefore, it is necessary to design a simple, robust and efficient trajectory tracking algorithm which adapt to the various parking conditions. Firstly, considering the predictability and the ability of dealing with various system constraints, the model predictive control (MPC) lateral controller is designed. Then, the second lateral controller based on linear quadratic regulator (LQR) algorithm is designed, which has the excellent capability of balancing the multiple performances of the system. Finally, Stanley lateral controller is designed as the benchmark for horizontal comparison. Parallel and vertical parking simulation environments are proposed to verify the effectiveness of the designed lateral controllers, and the advantages and shortcomings of each control algorithm are horizontally analyzed and summarized.

With development of vehicle advanced driver assistant system and intelligent techniques, safer and more intelligent Integrated-Electro-Hydraulic Braking System is required to realize brake-by-wire. Thus, more and more companies and universities developed Integrated-Electro-Hydraulic Braking System to fulfill these requirements. In this paper, an Integrated-Electro-Hydraulic Braking System is introduced, which consists of active source power, pedal feel emulator and electro control unit. As a composite system of mechanic, electron and hydraulic pressure, the Integrated-Electro-Hydraulic Braking System has complex system characteristics. Integrated-Electro-Hydraulic Braking System and active power source have very different dynamic characteristics. So algorithms of hydraulic pressure control and motor control should be apart, but algorithm of them should be united in hardware to meet integration demand.

For intelligent vehicles, a fast and accurate estimation of road slope is of great significance for many aspects, including the steering comfort, fuel economy, vehicle stability control, driving decision-making, etc. But the commonly used estimation methods nowadays usually demand additional sensors or complex dynamic models, causing increase in system complexity as well as decrease in accuracy. To solve these problems, this paper puts forward a real-time road slope estimation algorithm leveraging the relationship between pitch angle and road slope, which only requires low sensors cost and computational complexity. Firstly, a GNSS/INS fusion system is established to obtain the pitch angle with respect to the navigation frame, which couples the vehicle’s pitch angle in vehicle frame and road slope angle.

Accurate and reliable localization in GNSS-denied environments is critical for autonomous driving. Nevertheless, LiDAR-based and camera-based methods are easily affected by adverse weather conditions such as rain, snow, and fog. The 4D Radar with all-weather performance and high resolution has attracted more interest. Currently, there are few localization algorithms based on 4D Radar, so there is an urgent need to develop reliable and accurate positioning solutions. This paper introduces RIO-Vehicle, a novel tightly coupled 4D Radar/IMU/vehicle dynamics within the factor graph framework. RIO-Vehicle aims to achieve reliable and accurate vehicle state estimation, encompassing position, velocity, and attitude. To enhance the accuracy of relative constraints, we introduce a new integrated IMU/Dynamics pre-integration model that combines a 2D vehicle dynamics model with a 3D kinematics model.

This paper presents several pressure estimation algorithms (PEAs) for a decoupled electro-hydraulic brake system (EHB), which is driven by an electric motor + reduction gear. Most of the pressure control solutions are based on standard pressure-based feedback control, requiring a pressure signal. Although the pressure sensor can produce the pressure feedback signal, it will increase cost and enlarge installation space. The rotation angle of electric motor is available by the built-in sensor, so the pressure can be estimated by using the rotation angle. Considering the typical nonlinearities (i.e. friction, pressure-position relationship) and uncertainties (i.e. disturbance caused by friction model), the estimation-oriented model is established. The LuGre model is selected to describe the friction, and the pressure-position relationship is fitted by a quadratic polynomial.

Visual sensors are widely used in autonomous vehicles (AVs) for object detection due to the advantages of abundant information and low-cost. But the performance of visual sensors is highly affected by low light conditions when AVs driving at nighttime and in the tunnel. The low light conditions decrease the image quality and the performance of object detection, and may cause safety of the intended functionality (SOTIF) problems. Therefore, to analyze the performance limitations of visual sensors in low light conditions, a controlled light experiment on a proving ground is designed. The influences of low light conditions on the two-stage algorithm and the single-stage algorithm are compared and analyzed quantificationally by constructing an evaluation index set from three aspects of missing detection, classification, and positioning accuracy.

Recent researches in autonomous driving mainly consider the uncertainty in perception and prediction modules for safety enhancement. However, obstacles which block the field-of-view (FOV) of sensors could generate blind areas and leaves environmental uncertainty a remaining challenge for autonomous vehicles. Current solutions mainly rely on passive obstacles avoidance in path planning instead of active perception to deal with unexplored high-risky areas. In view of the problem, this paper introduces the concept of information entropy, which quantifies uncertain information in the blind area, into the motion planning module of autonomous vehicles. Based on model predictive control (MPC) scheme, the proposed algorithm can plan collision-free trajectories while actively explore unknown areas to minimize environmental uncertainty. Simulation results under various challenging scenarios demonstrate the improvement in safety and comfort with the proposed perception-aware planning scheme.

Steering of skid-steered vehicles without steering mechanism is realized by differential drive/brake torque generated from in-wheel motors at left and right sides. Compared to traditional Ackerman-steered vehicles, skid-steered vehicles consume much more energy while steering due to greater steering resistance. Torque allocation is critical to the distributed drive skid-steered vehicles, since it influences not only steering performance, but also energy efficiency. In this paper, the dynamic characteristics of six-wheeled skid-steered vehicles were analyzed, and a 2-DOF vehicle model was established, which is important for both motion tracking control and torque allocation. Furthermore, a hierarchical controller was proposed. Considering tire force characteristics and tire slip, the upper layer calculates the generalized force and desired yaw moment based on anti-windup PI (proportion-integral) control method.

Environmental perception is a crucial subsystem in autonomous vehicles. In order to build safe and efficient traffic transportation, several researches have been proposed to build accurate, robust and real-time perception systems. Camera and LiDAR are widely equipped on autonomous self-driving cars and developed with many algorithms in recent years. The fusion system of camera and LiDAR provides state-of the-art methods for environmental perception due to the defects of single vehicular sensor. Extrinsic parameter calibration is able to align the coordinate systems of sensors and has been drawing enormous attention. However, differ from spatial alignment of two sensors’ data, joint calibration of multi-sensors (more than two sensors) should balance the degree of alignment between each two sensors.

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.

The integrated control system which combines the differential drive assisted steering (DDAS) and the direct yaw moment control (DYC) for the distributed drive electric vehicle (DDEV) is studied. A handling improvement algorithm for the normal cornering maneuvers is proposed based on motion tracking control. Considering the ideal assistant power character curves at different velocities, an open-loop DDAS control strategy is developed to respond the driver’s demand of steering wheel torque. The DYC strategy contains the steering angle feedforward and the yaw rate feedback. The steering angle feedforward control strategy is employed to improve yaw rate steady gain of vehicle. The maximum feedforward coefficients at different velocities are obtained from the constraint of the motor external characteristic, final feedforward coefficients are calculated according to the ideal assistant power character curve of the DDAS.

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.

For an electric vehicle driven by four in-wheel motors, the torque of each wheel can be controlled precisely and independently. A closed-loop control method of differential drive assisted steering (DDAS) has been proposed to improve vehicle steering properties based on those advantages. With consideration of acceleration requirement, a three dimensional characteristic curve that indicates the relation between torque and angle of the steering wheel at different vehicle speeds was designed as a basis of the control system. In order to deal with the saturation of motor's output torque under certain conditions, an anti-windup PI control algorithm was designed. Simulations and vehicle tests, including pivot steering test, lemniscate test and central steering test were carried out to verify the performance of the DDAS in steering portability and road feeling.

With the electrification and intelligentialization of vehicle, requirements on more intelligent and integrated brake system are put forward. A novel integrated-electro-hydraulic brake system (I-EHB) for automotive is presented to fulfill these requirements. I-EHB is consisted of active power source (APS), pedal feel emulator (PFE), electro control unit (ECU) and hydraulic control unit (HCU). The system characteristics of I-EHB are tested through test rig. According to characteristics experiments, friction and non-linear phenomena in hydraulic pressure control are found. In order to overcome these phenomena in control of I-EHB, chatter-compensation is adopted based on experiment analysis. Algorithm are tested and optimized through test rig. As a result, through chatter-compensation the hydraulic pressure is controlled accurately and chatter-compensation is optimized for different working conditions.

Based on the four-wheel-drive electric vehicle (4WD EV), a variable structure control (VSC) strategy is designed in this paper for the anti-lock braking control. With nonpeak friction coefficient as target, sign judgment method of switch function in this VSC strategy is improved and a new control algorithm is proposed. The improved VSC strategy is made robust to the parameters of the algorithm and verified by the computer simulation as well as the hard-in-loop test. The results show that the slip rate can be controlled to a point in the stable area near the optimal slip ratio and the control strategy can effectively realize the anti-lock braking control.

BBW (Brake-by-wire) can increase the electric and hybrid vehicles performance and safety. This paper proposes a novel mechatronic booster system, which includes APS (active power source), PFE (pedal feel emulator), ECU (electronic control unit). The system is easily disturbed when the system parameters and the outside conditions change. The system performance is weakened. The cascade control technique can be used to solve the problem. This paper develops an adaptive cascade optimum control (ACOC) algorithm based on the novel mechatronic booster system. The system is divided into main loop and servo loop, both of them are closed-loop system. The servo-loop system can eliminate the disturbance which exists in the servo loop. So the robustness of the cascade control system is improved than which of the general closed-loop control system. Different control object is respectively chosen. The control-oriented mathematical model is designed.