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This paper sets up a simplified dynamic model for simulating the yaw/roll stability of heavy tractor-semitrailer using Matlab/Simulink. A linear quadratic regulator (LQR) based on partial-state feedback controller is used to optimize the roll stability of the vehicle. The control objective for optimizing roll stability is to be reducing the lateral load transfer rate while keeping the suspension angle less than the maximum allowable angle. The simulation result shows that the LQR controller is effective in the active roll stability control of the heavy tractor-semitrailer.

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.

In this paper, we present a model predictive controller for the autonomous vehicle lane-change maneuver. Firstly, an optimal trajectory is generated by polynomial, then, utilize it as the reference trajectory of the controller. It is well known that vehicle with nonholonomic constraints can not be feedback stabilized through continuously differentiable, time-invariant control laws. One of the advantages of MPC is the ability to handle constraints in a straightforward way. Quadratic programming is used to solve a linear MPC by successive linearization of an error model of the vehicle. Due to that the vehicle dynamics model is used, in order to prevent optimal solution cannot be obtained within the prescribed time, the relaxation factor in the objective function.

Steering-By-Wire (SBW) system has advantages of advanced vehicle control system, which has no mechanical linkage to control the steering wheel and front wheels. It is possible to control the steering wheel actuator and front wheels actuator steering independently. The goal of this paper is to use a joystick to substitute the conventional steering wheel with typical vehicle SBW system and to study a variable steering ratio design method. A 2-DOF vehicle dynamic reference model is built and focused on the vehicle steering performance of drivers control joystick. By verifying the results with a hardware-in-the-loop simulation test bench, it shows this proposed strategy can improve vehicle maneuverability and comfort.

With rapid increase of vehicles on the road, safety concerns have become increasingly prominent. Since the leading cause of many traffic accidents is known to be by human drivers, developing autonomous vehicles is considered to be an effective approach to solve the problems above. Although trajectory tracking plays one of the most important roles on autonomous driving, handling the coupling between trajectory-tracking control and ESP under certain driving scenarios remains to be challenging. This paper focuses on trajectory-tracking control considering the role of ESP. A vehicle model is developed with two degrees of freedom, including vehicle lateral, and yaw motions. Based on the proposed model, the vehicle trajectory is separated into both longitudinal and lateral motion. The coupling effect of the vehicle and ESP is analyzed in the paper. The lateral trajectory-tracking algorithm is developed based on the preview follower theory.

Omni-directional electric vehicle built by our research group is an advanced electric vehicle whose four wheels can drive, steer and brake independently. The vehicle chassis system is composed of four in-wheel motors, four independent steer motors and electromagnetic brake system, and its control system is divided into logical control layer and underlying execution layer. The information exchange between these two layers is implemented by CAN bus. In this paper, the traction control logic for Omni-directional electric vehicle is developed. The study mainly involves two aspects: the vehicle states estimation and the traction control logic design. The vehicle states, including vehicle longitudinal velocity, lateral speed, side slip angle and yaw rate, etc, are estimated based on Extended Kalman Estimation and multiple degrees of freedom vehicle model.

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.

When automobiles are at the threat of collisions, steering usually needs shorter longitudinal distance than braking for collision avoidance, especially under the condition of high speed or low adhesion. Thus, more collision accidents can be avoided in the same situation. The steering assistance is in need since the operation is hard for drivers. And considering the dynamic characteristics of vehicles in those maneuvers, the real-time and the accuracy of the assisted algorithms is essential. In view of the above problems, this paper first takes lateral acceleration of the vehicle as the constraint, aiming at the collision avoidance situation of the straight lane and the stable driving inside the curve, and trajectory of the collision avoidance is derived by a quintic polynomial.

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.

A vehicle dynamics stability control system based on integrated-electro-hydraulic brake (I-EHB) system with hierarchical control architecture and nonlinear control method is designed to improve the vehicle dynamics stability under extreme conditions in this paper. The I-EHB system is a novel brake-by-wire system, and is suitable to the development demands of intelligent vehicle technology and new energy vehicle technology. Four inlet valves and four outlet valves are added to the layout of a conventional four-channel hydraulic control unit. A permanent-magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) provides a stabilized high-pressure source in the master cylinder, and the four-channel hydraulic control unit ensures that the pressures in each wheel cylinder can be modulated separately at a high precision. Besides, the functions of Anti-lock Braking System, Traction Control System and Regenerative Braking System, Autonomous Emergency Braking can be integrated in this brake-by-wire system.

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.

The passive fault-tolerant performance of the integrated vehicle controller (IVC) applied on 4WID/4WIS Electric Vehicles has been investigated in this study. The 4WID/4WIS EV is driven independently by four in-wheel motors and steered independently by four steering motors. Thanks to increased control flexibility of the over-actuated architecture, Control Allocation (CA) can be applied to control the 4WID/4WIS EVs so as to improve the handling and stability. Another benefit of the over-actuated architecture is that the 4WID/4WIS Electric Vehicle has sufficient redundant actuators to fight against the safety critical situation when one or more actuators fail.

In this paper, a model predictive control (MPC) based trajectory tracking scheme utilizing steering wheel and braking or acceleration pedal is proposed for intelligent vehicles. The control objective is to track a desired trajectory which is obtained from the trajectory planner. The proposed control is based on a simplified third-order vehicle model, which consists of longitudinal vehicle dynamics along with a commonly used bicycle model. A nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC) is adopted in order to follow a given path by controlling front steering, braking and traction, while fulfilling various physical and design constraints. In order to reduce the computational burden, the NMPC is converted to a linear time-varying (LTV) MPC based on successive online linearization of the nonlinear system model. Two different test conditions have been used to verify the effectiveness of the proposed approaches through simulations using Matlab and CarSim.

This paper presents a unified novel function-based brake control architecture, which is designed based on a top-down approach with functional abstraction and modularity. The proposed control architecture includes a commands interpreter module, including a driver commands interpreter to interpret driver intention, and a command integration to integrate the driver intention with senor-guided active driving command, state observers for estimation of vehicle sideslip, vehicle speed, tire lateral and longitudinal slips, tire-road friction coefficient, etc., a commands integrated control allocation module which aims to generate braking force and yaw moment commands and provide optimal distribution among four wheels without body instability and wheel lock or slip, a low-level control module includes four wheel pressure control modules, each of which regulates wheel pressure by fast and accurate tracking commanded wheel pressure.

The evaluation of electric vehicle electric/electronic-architectures (e/e-architectures) is the main topic of this paper. The electric vehicle is chosen as an example system, as it reflects the typical challenges of modern vehicle e/e-architecture development. The development of modern automotive technology also presents another important trend - vehicle electrification. New electric and electronic devices are developed and required in the automotive industry and control commands are exchanged by electric and electronic ones. The energy storage systems (ESS) properly reflect the above two aspects. The energy storage device also takes care of the peak loads, the high load dynamics, and it utilizes the braking energy in order to increase the efficiency. In this work a Li-ion battery and an ultracapacitor both are considered as energy storage devices.

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.

Steer-by-Wire system is capable of improving the performance of vehicle handling and stability, and assisting driving. It becomes a key technique to control front wheel angle and simulate the steering resistance delivered to the driver because of removing mechanical linkages between the steering wheel and the front wheels. This paper proposes a bilateral control method of steering wheel torque drive/pinion angle feedback, which is disaccustomed of controlling steering wheel block and steering actuator as master-slave plants. The pinion angle, steering wheel angle and its torque signals are used in the control logic without estimating or measuring the tire/road force. Simulations and vehicle experiments proceeded with this proposed method and the results confirmed that it achieves the bilateral control of the position and torque between the two plants.

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.

The slip ratio of vehicle driving wheels is easily beyond a reasonable range in the complex and changeable driving conditions. In order to achieve the adaptive acceleration slip regulation of four-wheel driving (4WD) vehicle, a fuzzy control strategy of Automatic Drive Train Management (ADM) system based on road situation identification was proposed in this paper. Firstly, the influence on the control strategy of ADM system was analyzed from two aspects, which included the different road adhesion coefficients and the vehicle’s ramp driving state. In the meantime several quantitative expressions of relevant control parameters were derived. Secondly, the fuzzy logic control algorithm was adopted to design a road situation identification subsystem and a ramp driving state identification subsystem respectively. The former was based on the μ-S curve model, and the latter was based on the vehicle driving equilibrium equation.

An integrated control strategy for vehicle active suspension system which combines linear quadratic optimum control law with fuzzy control algorithm is designed to improve both ride and handling. The performance of this control strategy is then examined and assessed in an open-loop J-turn driving scenario on a random-rough road by means of computer simulation. Comparisons to a passive suspension system in terms of vehicle sprung mass vertical acceleration, body roll angle and yaw rate is conducted. Simulation results indicate that the integrated control strategy proposed in this paper could effectively enhance vehicle ride comfort meanwhile benefit handling quality and driving safety.