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Research of Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) is an important issue of intelligent vehicle (IV). As we all known, a real and experienced driver can control vehicle's speed very well under every traffic environment of ACC working. So a direct and feasible way for establishing ACC controller is to build a human-like longitudinal control algorithm with the simulation of driver behavior of speed control. In this paper, a novel fuzzy self-tuning control algorithm of ACC is established and this controller's parameters can be tuned on-line based on the evaluation indexes that can describe how the driver consider the quality of dynamical characteristic of vehicle longitudinal dynamics. With the advantage of the controller's parameter on-line self-tuning, the computational workload from matching design of ACC controller is also efficiently reduced.

A HIL simulator for developing vehicle adaptive cruise control systems is presented in this paper. The xPC target is used to establish real-time simulation environment. The simulator is composed of a virtual vehicle model, real components of an ACC system like ECU, electronic throttle and braking modulator, a user interface to facilitate simulation, and brake and accelerator pedals to make interactive driver inputs easier. The vehicle model is validated against data from field test. Tests of an ACC controller in the real-time are conducted on the simulator.

The conventional radar modeling methods for automotive applications were either function-based or physics-based. The former approach was mainly abstracted as a solution of the intersection between geometric representations of radar beam and targets, while the latter one took radar detection mechanism into consideration by means of “ray tracing”. Although they each has its unique advantages, they were often unrealistic or time-consuming to meet actual simulation requirements. This paper presents a combined geometric and physical modeling method on millimeter-wave radar systems for Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) modulation format under a 3D simulation environment. With the geometric approach, a link between the virtual radar and 3D environment is established. With the physical approach, on the other hand, the ideal target detection and measurement are contaminated with noise and clutters aimed to produce the signals as close to the real ones as possible.

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.

With the development of intelligent and electric vehicles, higher requirements are put forward for the active braking and regenerative braking ability of the braking system. The traditional braking system equipped with vacuum booster has difficulty meeting the demand, therefore it has gradually been replaced by the integrated braking system. In this paper, a novel Integrated Braking System (IBS) is presented, which mainly contains a pedal feel simulator, a permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM), a series of transmission mechanisms, and the hydraulic control unit. As an integrative system of mechanics-electronics-hydraulics, the IBS has complex nonlinear characteristics, which challenge the accurate pressure control. Furthermore, it is a completely decoupled braking system, the pedal force doesn’t participate in pressure-building, so it is necessary to precisely identify driver’s braking intention.

Vehicle lane keeping system is becoming a new research focus of drive assistant system except adaptive cruise control system. As we all known, vehicle lateral dynamics show strong nonlinear and time-varying with the variety of longitudinal velocity, especially tire’s mechanics characteristic will change from linear characteristic under low speed to strong nonlinear under high speed. For this reason, the traditional PID controller and even self-tuning PID controller, which need to know a precise vehicle lateral dynamics model to adjust the control parameter, are too difficult to get enough accuracy and the ideal control quality. Based on neural network’s ability of self-learning, adaptive and approximate to any nonlinear function, an adaptive PID control algorithm with BP neural network self-tuning online was proposed for vehicle lane keeping.

The global adaptive cruise control (ACC) market is expected to witness a compound annual growth rate of 18.3% during the forecast period to reach $15,290 million by 2023 [1]. The driver uses an ACC system to reduce the driving burden and improve safety. The ACC mode in a car is fixed, but different drivers have different driving habits. This paper will verify this through experiments and divide drivers into three categories according to the drivers’ driving habits. Therefore, we will design a personalized ACC, wherein an ACC system, under the same working conditions, can have different acceleration and deceleration to meet the needs of different types of drivers. Therefore, this paper collects driver data, analyzes model data and identifies its parameters, and finally verifies the different effects of personalized ACC through simulation.

In order to predict the fatigue life of thrust rod heavy duty commercial vehicle balanced suspension, based on the continuum mechanics theory, the fatigue life prediction model of rubber with equivalent effect as damage parameter is established. Based on the equivalent stress and fatigue cumulative damage theory, the fatigue damage evolution equation of rubber material expressed by stress is derived by using the strain energy function. The general fatigue life model is established by using the maximum logarithmic principal strain as the damage parameter. The finite element model of the thrust rod is established, and the stress distribution of the spherical hinge rubber layer and the easy damage area are analyzed. Based on the equivalent stress calculation results and the axial tension stress and strain data of the rubber material, the accuracy of the results of the finite element calculation is verified.

Recent research has shown that butanol, instead of ethanol, has the potential of introducing a more suitable blend in diesel engines. This is because butanol has properties similar to current transportation fuels in comparison to ethanol. However, the main downside is the high cost of the butanol production process. Acetone-butanol-ethanol (ABE) is an intermediate product of the fermentation process of butanol production. By eliminating the separation and purification processes, using ABE directly in diesel blends has the potential of greatly decreasing the overall cost for fuel production. This could lead to a vast commercial use of ABE-diesel blends on the market. Much research has been done in the past five years concerning spray and combustion processes of both neat ABE and ABE-diesel mixtures. Additionally, different compositions of ABE mixtures had been characterized with a similar experimental approach.

The intelligent unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) motorcade system consisting of one leader and n − 1 followers is considered. The safety distance between the front and rear UGVs is treated as the control target. Since the safety distance constraint is a unilateral constraint, the state transformation is needed. Hence, a piecewise type conversion function is formulated to serve for the transformation of the original inequality constraint. The system equation is further expressed by the new state. We assume that the input of the leading UGV is known. Combined with the uncertainty evaluation, a class of collaborative controls for the following UGVs is proposed to deal with the uncertainty with unknown bound. The effectiveness of the designed control is verified by both Lyapunov stability theory and simulations. Both theoretical and simulation results illustrate that the longitudinal safety, stability and global behavior of the intelligent motorcade system are guaranteed.

The electronic control system of the variable nozzle turbocharger (VNT) was designed. The actuator is the electro-hydraulic servo proportional solenoid. The signals of the engine pedal position sensor, the engine speed sensor, the boost pressure sensor, the intake air temperature sensor, and the ambient pressure sensor are sampled and filtered. The engine working condition is estimated. The control algorithm was designed as the closed-loop feedback digital PI control together with the open-loop feed forward control. The gain-scheduled PI control method is applied to improve the robustness. The control system was calibrated at the turbocharger test bench and the engine test bench. The results indicate the designed control system has good performance for the boost pressure control under the steady and transient conditions.

As a novel assist actuator of brake system, the electromechanical brake (EMB) booster has played a significant role in the battery electric vehicles and automatic driving vehicles. It has advantages of independent to vacuum source, active braking, and tuning pedal feeling compared with conventional vacuum brake booster. In this article, a novel EMB booster system is proposed, which is consisted of a permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM), a two-stage reduction by gears and ball screw, a servo body, and a reaction disk. Together with the hydraulic control unit, it has two working modes: active braking for automatic drive and passive braking for driver intervention. The structure and work principle of the electric brake booster system is first introduced. The precise control from pedal force to hydraulic pressure is the key for such a power-assisted brake actuator. We translate the control problem of force feedback control to position tracking control.

Electronic braking system (EBS) of commercial vehicle is developed from ABS to enhance the brake performance. Based on the early development of controller hardware, this paper starts with an analysis of the definition of EBS. It aims at the software design of electronic control unit, and makes it compiled into the controller in the form of C language by the in-depth study about control strategy of EBS in different braking conditions. Designed controller software is divided into two layers. The upper control strategy includes the recognition algorithm of driver's braking intention, estimation algorithm of the vehicle state, conventional braking strategy which consists of the algorithm of deceleration control and braking force distribution, and emergency braking strategy which consists of the algorithm of brake assist control and ABS control.

Adaptive cruise control system with lane change assistance (LCACC) is a novel advanced driver assistance system (ADAS), which enables dual-target tracking, safe lane change, and longitudinal ride comfort. To design the personalized LCACC system, one of the most important prerequisites is to identify the driver’s individualities. This paper presents a real-time driver behavior characteristics identification strategy for LCACC system. Firstly, a driver behavior data acquisition system was established based on the driver-in-the-loop simulator, and the behavior data of different types of drivers were collected under the typical test condition. Then, the driver behavior characteristics factor Ks we proposed, which combined the longitudinal and lateral control behaviors, was used to identify the driver behavior characteristics. And an individual safe inter-vehicle distances field (ISIDF) was established according to the identification results.

Low back pain has a higher prevalence among drivers who have long term history of vehicle operations. Vehicle vibration has been considered to contribute to the onset of low back pain. However, the fundamental mechanism that relates vibration to low back pain is still not clear. Little is known about the relationship between vibration exposure, the biomechanical response, and the physiological responses of the seated human. The aim of this study was to determine the vibration frequency that causes the increase of muscle activity that can lead to muscle fatigue and low back pain. This study investigated the effects of various vibration frequencies on the lumbar and thoracic paraspinal muscle responses among 11 seated volunteers exposed to sinusoidal whole body vibration varying from 4Hz to 30Hz at 0.4 g of acceleration. The accelerations of the seat and the pelvis were recorded during various frequency of vibrations. Muscle activity was measured using electromyography (EMG).

To address the issue of PID control for automotive vibration, this paper supplements and develops the evaluation of automotive vibration characteristics, and proposes a vibration response quantity for evaluating the energy dissipation characteristics of automotive vibration. A two-degree-of-freedom single wheel model for automotive vibration control is established, and the conventional vibration response variables for ride comfort evaluation and the energy consumption vibration response variables for energy dissipation characteristics evaluation are determined. This paper uses the Adaptive Differential Evolution (ADE) algorithm to tune the PID control parameters and introduces an adaptive mutation factor to improve the algorithm's adaptability. Several commonly used adaptive mutation factors are summarized in this paper, and their effects on algorithm improvement are compared.

In this paper, the dynamic stress of the front subframe of a passenger car was obtained using modal stress recovery method to estimate the fatigue life. A finite element model of the subframe was created and its accuracy was checked by modal test in a free hanging state. Furthermore, the whole vehicle rigid-flexible coupling model of the passenger car was built up while taking into account the flexibility of the subframe. Meanwhile, the road test data was used to verify the validity of the dynamic model. On this basis, the modal displacement time histories of the subframe were calculated by a dynamic simulation on virtual proving ground consisting of Belgian blocks, cobblestone road and washboard road. By combining the modal displacement time histories with modal stress tensors getting from normal mode analysis, the dynamic stress time histories of the subframe were obtained through modal stress recovery method.

The recent proliferation of perception sensing and computing technologies has promoted the rapid development of automated driving. The design of the perception sensing system has nonnegligible influences both on the performances of various automated driving features and on the system costs. This paper proposes an automated driving feature oriented framework for automatic selection and arrangement of the sensors in the perception sensing system. An automated driving feature oriented optimization model is built considering the characteristics and requirements of the specific feature and a genetic algorithm based design method is provided to solve this optimization model. Furthermore, the Adaptive Cruise Control feature and the Automated Parking Assistance feature are selected as the simulation cases to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Hybridization of vehicles is considered as the most promising technology for automakers and researchers, facing the challenge of optimizing both the fuel economy and emission of the road transport. Extensive studies have been performed on power-split hybrid electric vehicles (PS-HEVs). Despite of the fact that their excellent fuel economy performance in city driving conditions has been witnessed, a bottle neck for further improving the fuel economy of PS-HEVs has been encountered due to the inherent engine-generator-motor power circulation of the power-split system under medium-low speed cruising scenarios. Due to the special mechanical constraints of the power-split device (PSD), the conventional periodic cruising strategy like Pulse and Glide cannot be applied to PS-HEVs directly.

Considering the change of vehicle future power demand in the process of energy distribution can improve the fuel saving effect of hybrid system. However, current studies are mostly based on historical information to predict the future power demand, where it is difficult to guarantee the accuracy of prediction. To tackle this problem, this paper combines hybrid energy management with predictive cruise control, proposing a hierarchical control strategy of predictive energy management (PEM) that includes two layers of algorithms for speed planning and energy distribution. In the interest of decreasing the energy consumed by power components and ensuring transportation timeliness, the upper-level introduces a predictive cruise control algorithm while considering vehicle weight and road slope, planning the future vehicle speed during long-distance driving.