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Taking full advantage of available traffic environment information, making control decisions, and then planning trajectory systematically under structured roads conditions is a critical part of intelligent vehicle. In this article, a lane-changing decision-making method for intelligent vehicle is proposed based on acceleration field. Firstly, an acceleration field related to relative velocity and relative distance was built based on the analysis of braking process, and acceleration was taken as an indicator of safety evaluation. Then, a lane-changing decision method was set up with acceleration field while considering driver’s habits, traffic efficiency and safety. Furthermore, velocity regulation was also introduced in the lane-changing decision method to make it more flexible.

An autonomous vehicle is a comprehensive intelligent system that includes environment sensing, vehicle localization, path planning and decision-making control, of which environment sensing technology is a prerequisite for realizing autonomous driving. In the early days, vehicles sensed the surrounding environment through sensors such as cameras, radar, and lidar. With the development of 5G technology and the Vehicle-to-everything (V2X), other information from the roadside can also be received by vehicles. Such as traffic jam ahead, construction road occupation, school area, current traffic density, crowd density, etc. Such information can help the autonomous driving system understand the current driving environment more clearly. Vehicles are no longer limited to areas that can be sensed by sensors. Vehicles with different autonomous driving levels have different adaptability to the environment.

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.

Autonomous driving technology is more and more important nowadays, it has been changing the living style of our society. As for autonomous driving planning and control, vehicle dynamics has strong nonlinearity and uncertainty, so vehicle dynamics and control is one of the most challenging parts. At present, many kinds of specific vehicle dynamics models have been proposed, this review attempts to give an overview of the state of the art of vehicle dynamics models for autonomous driving. Firstly, this review starts from the simple geometric model, vehicle kinematics model, dynamic bicycle model, double-track vehicle model and multi degree of freedom (DOF) dynamics model, and discusses the specific use of these classical models for autonomous driving state estimation, trajectory prediction, motion planning, motion control and so on.

The brake-by-wire system (BBW) is better match the new energy vehicle in the future direction of development. The electro-mechanical brake (EMB) is lack of the brake failure backup and need a high 42 V voltage for the power supply. This paper presents a new brake-by-wire hybrid brake system (HBS) with the electro-hydraulic brake (EHB) equipped on the front wheels and the EMB equipped on the rear wheels. The combination of these two brake-by-wire systems has advantages of both the EHB and EMB system. The EMB on the rear wheels totally removing the rear pipes and can be simply mounted. In addition, since the need of brake torque on the rear axle is relatively small, the power supply of EMB can be reduced to 12 V. Meanwhile, the EHB on the front wheels has the failure backup function through the hydraulic line. The HBS can quickly and accurately regulate four wheels brake force of vehicles which can well meet the requirement of antilock brake system (ABS).

The Electronic Stability Program (ESP), as a key actuator of traditional automobile braking system, plays an important role in the development of intelligent vehicles by accurately controlling the pressure of wheels. However, the ESP is a highly nonlinear controlled object due to the changing of the working temperature, humidity, and hydraulic load. In this paper, an accurate pressure control strategy of single wheel during active braking of ESP is proposed, which doesn’t rely on the specific parameters of the hydraulic system and ESP. First, the structure and working principle of ESP have been introduced. Then, we discuss the possibility of Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) control based on the mathematical model of the high-speed switching valve. Subsequently, the pressure building characteristics of the inlet and outlet valves are analyzed by the hardware in the Loop (HiL) experimental platform.

The vehicle pull problem is very important to driving safety. Major factors that may cause the pull problem related to tire include variations of geometric dimension (e.g. RPK) and stiffness (e.g. cornering stiffness, aligning stiffness), plysteer and conicity. In previous research, the influencing mechanism of these factors was well studied. But in fact, vehicle pull problem caused by tire is probabilistic. When we assemble four tires onto the car, there could be 384 different assembly arrangements. If there are significant differences among these four tires, there will also be significant differences in the influence of different tire assembly schemes on vehicle pull, which has not been systematically discussed in previous studies. If we want to evaluate the pull performance of all these arrangements by vehicle test, it will be a time consuming process which will take almost 24 working days, along with a high test expense.

The EPS motor will be over-heated if large current lasts for a long time, which will decline the performance of EPS motor and even lead to irreparable damage. So the over-temperature protection control should be conducted in order to protect the components of EPS system, especially the durability of EPS motor. In this paper, the motor temperature was estimated according to the environmental temperature and the current of motor armature, and then the EPS assist current was limited based on the estimated temperature of motor to ensure that the EPS motor had a good working condition. So the over-temperature protection control for motor can be realized without increasing the EPS system components. Finally the control strategy for over-temperature protection was conducted in a vehicle with EPS system and its performance was verified.

Steering movement is the most basic movement of the vehicle, in the car driving process, the driver through the steering wheel has always been to control the direction of the car, in order to achieve their own driving intention. Four Wheel Steering (4WS) is an advanced vehicle control technique which can markedly improve vehicle steering characteristics. Compared with traditional front wheel steering vehicles, 4WS vehicles can steer the front wheels and the rear wheels individually for cornering, according to the vehicle motion states such as the information of vehicle speed, yaw velocity and lateral acceleration. Therefore, 4WS can enhance the handling stability and improve the active safety for vehicles.

In order to study the influence of body flexibility on the truck ride comfort, a 4 DOF half vibration model of truck based on the motion synthesis between rigid body and body flexibility is established using elastic beam theory of equal section with both free ends. At the same time, a corresponding 2 DOF rigid vibration model is also built. The frequency response functions of system and response variables of two models are derived based on front wheel. The power spectral densities and the root mean square values of body acceleration, dynamic deflections and relative dynamic loads are obtained. By comparing the simulation results of rigid-elastic model and rigid model, it shows that body flexibility has a great impact on truck ride comfort and it cannot be ignored.

Vehicle needs suspension and steering systems with different features to fit different driving conditions. In normal straight driving condition, soft suspension and heavy steering systems are needed to achieve better ride comfort and straight line driving stability; in turning conditions, hard suspension and lightweight steering systems are needed to get better handing stability. The semi-active suspension system with Magneto-Rheological dampers can improve the ride comfort and handling performance of vehicle. Electrical power steering system is developed rapidly due to its portable and flexible operations as well as stable steering performance.

Since steering wheel torque feedback is one of the crucial factors for drivers to gain road feel and ensure driving safety, it is especially important to simulate the steering torque feedback for a driving simulator. At present, steering wheel feedback torque is mainly simulated by an electric motor with gear transmission. The torque response is typically slow, which can result in drivers’ discomfort and poor driving maneuverability. This paper presents a novel torque feedback device with magnetorheological (MR) fluid and coil spring. A phase separation control method is also proposed to control its feedback torque, including spring and damping torques respectively. The spring torque is generated by coil spring, the angle of coil spring can be adjusted by controlling a brushless DC motor. The damping torque is generated by MR fluid, the damping coefficient of MR fluid can be adjusted by controlling the current of excitation coil.

When automobile is at the threat of collisions, steering usually needs a shorter longitudinal distance than braking to avoid collision, especially at a high speed. In emergency steering evasion, the vehicle may be out of the road or colliding with obstacles ahead when the driver’s steering torque is excessive or insufficient. In view of the above problems, this paper presents an emergency steering evasion torque assistance system based on optimized trajectory. First, a feasible steering evasion area is established which treats the paths of excessive and insufficient steering as boundary conditions in this paper. An optimized trajectory is derived from the lateral acceleration of the vehicle and the time to the adjacent lane as optimization conditions. Second, a two degree of freedom vehicle model is used to represent dynamics of the vehicle.

A predictive model of a specific vehicle was modeled in the system-level physical modeling tool, MapleSim, for performance and fuel consumption prediction of a full vehicle powertrain, driving a multi-body chassis model with tire models. The project also includes investigation into overall fuel efficiency and effect on vehicle handling for different drive cycles. The goals of this project were to investigate: 1) the relationships between the forces at tire/road interfaces during various drive cycles and the fuel efficiency of a vehicle, and 2) the interaction between the powertrain and the chassis of the vehicle. To accomplish these goals, a complete vehicle model was created in the lumped-parameter physical modeling tool, MapleSim. A great deal of effort has gone into using real parameters and to assure that some mathematical rigour has been employed in its development.

Steer-By-Wire (SBW) system directly transmits the driver's steering input to the wheels through electrical signals. However, the reliability of electronic equipment is significantly lower than that of mechanical structures, and the risk of failure increases, so it is important to conduct functional safety studies on SBW systems. This paper develops the functional safety of the SBW system according to the requirements of the international standard ISO26262, and first defines the relevant items and application scope of SBW system. Secondly, the Hazard and Operability (HAZOP) method was used to combine scenarios and possible dangerous events to carry out Hazard Analysis and Risk Assessment (HARA), and the Automotive Safety Integrity Level (ASIL) was obtained according to the three evaluation indicators of Exposure, Severity and Controlabillity, and then the corresponding safety objectives were established and Fault Tolerant Time Interval (FTTI) was set.

The powers generated by the skidding and slipping of a vehicle in unit time during driving are referred to as parasitic power. It has significant effects on wear on the tires, service life, and overall efficiency. However, existing methods to calculate parasitic power expressions that are not solvable in some cases, the reasonableness of the results of their calculations cannot be verified by experiments and the parameters of the loader cannot be calculated during the design of the vehicle. In this paper, we systematically analyze the mechanism of generation of parasitic power based on the differences in the radii of the tires of loaders. We innovatively propose a theoretical calculation method to calculate the wheel circumference parasitic work during the design of the loader. The results of experiments show that errors between the theoretical and experimental values of the wheel circumference parasitic work calculated under various working conditions were smaller than 5%.

Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) has a wide range of applications in the military, agriculture, firefighting and other fields. Path planning, as a key aspect of autonomous driving technology, plays an essential role for UGV to accomplish the established driving tasks. At present, there are many global path planning algorithms in grid maps on unstructured roads, while general grid maps do not consider the specific elevation or ground type difference of each grid, and unstructured roads are generally considered as flat and open roads. On the contrary, the unmanned off-road is always a bumpy road with undulating terrain, and meanwhile, the landform is complex and the types of features are diverse. In order to ensure the safety and improve the efficiency of autonomous driving of UGV in off-road environment, this paper proposes a global off-road path planning method for UGV based on the raw image of remote sensing map. Firstly, the raw image is gridded.

A general principle scheme of IEHB (Integrated Electro-Hydraulic Brake system) is proposed, and the working principle of the system is simply introduced in this paper. Considering the structure characteristics of the hydraulic control unit of the system, a kind of time-sharing control strategy is adopted to realize the purpose of independent and precise hydraulic pressure regulation of each wheel brake cylinder in various brake conditions of a vehicle. Because of the strong nonlinear and time varying characteristics of the dynamic brake pressure regulation processes of IEHB, its comprehensive brake performance is mainly affected by temperature, humidity, load change, the structure and control parameters of IEHB, and so on.

A compact sized vehicle that has a narrow track could solve problems caused by vehicle congestion and limited parking spaces in a mega city. Having a smaller footprint reduces the vehicle's total weight which would decrease overall vehicle power consumption. Also a smaller and narrower vehicle could travel easily through tight and congested roads that would speed up the traffic flow and hence decrease the overall traffic volume in urban areas. As an additional benefit of having a narrow track length, a driver can experience similar motorcycle riding experience without worrying about bad weather conditions since a driver sits in a weather protected cabin. However, reducing the vehicle's track causes instability in vehicle dynamics, which leads to higher possibility of rollovers if the vehicle is not controlled properly. A three wheel personal vehicle with an active tilting system is designed in MapleSim.

This paper reports an effort to improve plan of vehicle trajectory using an approach with rapidly-exploring random trees (RRT), which has been widely adopted in the prior art for complex and dynamic traffic environment. Design and implement of an integrated threat assessment is presented that evaluates threats of the trajectory. A node and trajectory evaluation index was introduced into the proposed RRT algorithm to connect an appropriate node and select the best trajectory. The contribution of this paper is on the threat assessment that takes into account not only obstacle avoidance but also stability. The simulation is conducted and the results show that the proposed method works as expected and is valid and effective.