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This paper introduces the characteristics of the 4 wheel independent driving/4 wheel independent steering (4WID/4WIS) electric vehicle (EV). Models of Subsystems and the vehicle are constructed based on Matlab/simulink. The vehicle model allows the inputs of different drive torques and steer angles of four wheels. The dynamic characteristics of drive motors and steer motors are considered, and also it can reflect the vehicle longitudinal dynamics change due to the increase of the mass and inertia of the four wheels. Besides, drive mode selection function that is unique to this type vehicle is involved. Simulations and analyses of crab, oblique driving and zero radius turning which are the special conditions of 4WID/4WIS EV are conducted. The results show that the model can reflect the dynamic response characteristics. The model can be used to the simulation analyses of handling, stability, energy saving and control strategies verification of 4WID/4WIS EVs.

A braking force distribution strategy in integrated braking system composed of the main braking system and the auxiliary braking system based on braking pad wear control and hitch force control under non-emergency braking condition is proposed based on the Electronically Controlled Braking System (EBS) to reduce the difference in braking pad wear between different axles and to decrease hitch force between tractors and trailers. The proposed strategy distributes the braking force based on the desired braking intensity, the degree of the braking pad wear and the limits of certain braking regulations to solve the coupling problems between braking safety, economical efficiency of braking and the comfort of drivers. Computer co-simulations of the proposed strategy are performed.

Performance testing and evaluation always plays an important role in the developmental process of a vehicle, which also applies to autonomous vehicles. The complex nature of an autonomous vehicle from architecture to functionality demands even more quality-and-quantity controlled testing and evaluation than ever before. Most of the existing testing methodologies are task-or-scenario based and can only support single or partial functional testing. These approaches may be helpful at the initial stage of autonomous vehicle development. However, as the integrated autonomous system gets mature, these approaches fall short of supporting comprehensive performance evaluation. This paper proposes a novel hierarchical and systematic testing and evaluation approach to bridge the above-mentioned gap.

In this paper, we proposed a distributed Engineering Computer Aided Learning System. Instead of attending engineering teaching sessions, engineering students are able to interact with the software to gain the same amount of teaching materials. Besides, they will interact with other engineering students from other Engineering schools. The proposed software has the ability to examine the student step by step to reach certain goals. The training and the examination will be different based on the student level and his learning process. Using this system the role of excellent professor can be achieved. The software will have two sessions, i.e. test session and learning session. The software provides the capability of knowledge sharing between multi schools and different educational systems that can provide the students with a large set of training materials. The system was built using JAVA programming language.

The driving behaviors of young drivers under the influence of anger are analyzed by driving simulator in this paper. A total of 12 subjects are enrolled during the experiment. Standardized videos are utilized to induce the driver's anger emotion. And the driver's electrocardiogram (ECG) signal is collected synchronously and compared before and after emotional trigger, which prove the validity of emotional trigger. Based on the result, the driver's driving performance under the straight road and the curve under normal state and angry state are compared and analyzed. The results of independent sample t-test show that there are significant differences in the running time of straight sections and the standard deviation of steering wheel angle in curves between normal and angry states. In conclusion, the longitudinal and lateral operation of drivers is unstable in angry state and the driver will be more destructive to the regular driving behavior.

Contemporary manufacturing systems are still evolving. The system elements, layouts, and integration methods are changing continuously, and ‘collaborative robots’ (CoBots) are now being considered as practical industrial solutions. CoBots, unlike traditional CoBots, are safe and flexible enough to work with humans. Although CoBots have the potential to become standard in production systems, there is no strong foundation for systems design and development. The focus of this research is to provide a foundation and four tier framework to facilitate the design, development and integration of CoBots. The framework consists of the system level, work-cell level, machine level, and worker level. Sixty-five percent of traditional robots are installed in the automobile industry and it takes 200 hours to program (and reprogram) them.

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.

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.

When performing trajectory planning for robotic applications, there are many aspects to consider, such as the reach conditions, joint and end-effector velocities, accelerations and jerk conditions, etc. The reach conditions are dependent on the end-effector orientations and the robot kinematic structure. The reach condition feasibility is the first consideration to be addressed prior to optimizing a solution. The ‘functional’ work space or work window represents a region of feasible reach conditions, and is a sub-set of the work envelope. It is not intuitive to define. Consequently, 2D solution approaches are proposed. The 3D travel paths are decomposed to a 2D representation via radial projections. Forward kinematic representations are employed to define a 2D boundary curve for each desired end effector orientation.

Taking a good longitudinal braking performance on flat and level road of tractor and semi-trailer combination as a target, in order to achieve an ideal braking force distribution among axles, while the vehicle deceleration is just depend on the driver's intention, not affected by the variation of semi-trailer mass, the paper proposes a model based vehicle mass identification and braking force distribution strategy. The strategy identifies the driver's braking intention via braking pedal, estimates semi-trailer's mass during the building process of braking pressure in brake chamber, distributes braking force among axles by using the estimated mass. And a double closed-loop regulation of the vehicle deceleration and utilization adhesion coefficient of each axle is presented, in order to eliminate the bad effect of mass estimation error, and enhance the robustness of the whole algorithm. A simulation is conducted by utilizing MATLAB/Simulink and TruckSim.

Transport vehicles consume a large amount of fuel with low efficiency, which is significantly affected by drivers' behaviors. An assessment system of eco-driving pattern for buses could identify the deficiencies of driver operation as well as assist transportation enterprises in driver management. This paper proposes an assessment method regarding drivers' economic efficiency, considering driving conditions. To this end, assessment indexes are extracted from driving economy theories and ranked according to their effect on fuel consumption, derived from a database of 135 buses using multiple regression. A layered structure of assessment indexes is developed with application of AHP, and the weight of each index is estimated. The driving pattern score could be calculated with these weights.

Road test simulation on test rig is widely used in the automobile industry to shorten the development circles. However, there is still room for further improving the time cost of current road simulation test. This paper described a new method considering both the damage error and the runtime of the test on a multi-axial test rig. First, the fatigue editing technique is applied to cut the small load in road data to reduce the runtime initially. The edited road load data could be reproduced on a multi-axial test rig successfully. Second, the rainflow matrices of strains on different proving ground roads are established and transformed into damage matrices based on the S-N curve and Miner rules using a reduction method. A standard simulation test for vehicle reliability procedure is established according to the proving ground schedule as a target to be accelerated.

The earth's fossil energy is not limitless, and we should be taking advantage of the highly developed fields of science and technology to utilize it more efficiently and to create a fully environmentally friendly life. Considering the prodigious amount of vehicles in the world today, even a small improvement in their energy-saving performance could have a significant impact. In this paper, a new type of electro-hydraulic power steering (EHPS) system is described. It has two main advantages. First, it can significantly decrease the demand on the motor so that it can be used for a wider range of vehicles. Second, its pressure-flow characteristic can be programmed and is more flexible than hydraulic power steering (HPS) system. A prototype with a 500 W motor was applied to a truck with a front load of 2,700 kg, and static steer sweep tests were conducted to validate its feasibility.

The electromagnetic regenerative suspension has attracted much attention recently due to its potential to improve ride comfort and handling stability, at the same time recover kinetic energy which is typically dissipated in traditional shock absorbers. The key components of a ball-screw regenerative suspension system are a motor, a ball screw and a nut. For this kind of regenerative suspension, its damping character is determined by the motor's torque-speed capacity, which is different from the damping character of the traditional shock absorber. Therefore, it is necessary to establish a systematic approach for the parameter matching of ball-screw regenerative suspension, so that the damping character provided by it can ensure ride comfort and handling stability. In this paper, a 2-DOF quarter vehicle simulation model with regenerative suspension is constructed. The effects of the inertia force on ride comfort and handling stability are analyzed.

Forecasting the motion of the leading vehicle is a critical task for connected autonomous vehicles as it provides an efficient way to model the leading-following vehicle behavior and analyze the interactions. In this study, a personalized time-series modeling approach for leading vehicle trajectory prediction considering different driving styles is proposed. The method enables a precise, personalized trajectory prediction for leading vehicles with limited inter-vehicle communication signals, such as vehicle speed, acceleration, space headway, and time headway of the front vehicles. Based on the learning nature of human beings that a human always tries to solve problems based on grouping and similar experience, three different driving styles are first recognized based on an unsupervised clustering with a Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM).

Due to the variation of compartment design and occupant’s posture in self-driving cars, there is a new and major challenge for occupant protection. In particular, the studies on occupant restraint systems used in the self-driving car have been significantly delayed compared to the development of the autonomous technologies. In this paper, a numerical study was conducted to investigate the effectiveness of three typical restraint systems on the driver protection in three different scenarios.

In a frontal automotive crash, the driver's foot is usually stepping on the brake pedal as an instinctive response to avoid a collision. The tensile force generated in the Achilles tendon produces a compressive preload on the tibia. If there is intrusion of the toe board after the crash, an additional external force is applied to the driver's foot. A series of dynamic impact tests using human cadaveric specimens was conducted to investigate the combined effect of muscle preloading and external force. A constant tendon force was applied to the calcaneus while an external impact force was applied to the forefoot by a rigid pendulum. Preloading the tibia significantly increased the tibial axial force and the combination of these forces resulted in five tibial pylon fractures out of sixteen specimens.

An energy management strategy is needed to optimally allocate the driver's power demands to different power sources in the fuel cell hybrid vehicles. The driver's power demand is modelled as a Markov process in which the transition probabilities are estimated on the basis of the observed sample paths. The Markov Decision Process (MDP) theory is applied to design a stochastic energy management strategy for fuel cell hybrid vehicles. This obtained control strategy was then tested on a real time simulation platform of the fuel cell hybrid vehicles. In comparison to the other 3 strategies, the constant bus voltage strategy, the static optimization strategy and the dynamic programming strategy, simulations in the Beijing bus driving cycle demonstrate that the obtained stochastic energy management strategy can achieve better performance in fuel economy in the same demand of dynamic.

This paper presents a study of LPG lean burn in a motorcycle SI engine. The lean burn limits are compared by several ways. The relations of lean burn limit with the parameters, such as engine speed, compression ratio and advanced spark ignition etc. are tested. The experimental results show that larger throttle opening, lower engine speed, earlier spark ignition timing, larger electrode gap and higher compression ratio will extend the lean burn limit of LPG. The emission of a LPG engine, especially on NOx emission, can be significantly reduced by means of the lean burn technology.