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Actuators for Surface Vehicles

A section of Actuators (ISSN 2076-0825).

Section Information

Surface vehicles (SVs) are a broad category of transportation that encompass any vehicle designed to travel on the surface of the Earth, i.e., land, water, sand, and other terrains. This includes vehicles from cars and trains to boats and surface vessels. Surface vehicles play a crucial role in daily transportation, commerce, and logistics. As the backbone of the world's infrastructure, SVs enable the movement of people and goods across cities, countries, and continents. With technological advancements, modern surface vehicles are becoming increasingly efficient, safe, and environmentally friendly. Electric and hybrid vehicles, autonomous vehicles, and smart traffic management systems are key representatives driving this transformation.

Actuators are an indispensable piece of equipment for SV systems which are defined as an execution unit (EU) with operating and motion natures. The main characteristic of SV systems is the integration and complementarities of several aspects from many disciplines, including, but not limited to, actuators, sensors, assembled systems, vehicular electronics, vehicle dynamics and control systems, vehicle fault diagnosis, signal processing, and performance measurements. Actuation components, such as drive systems, mechanical/electromechanical, hydraulic, pneumatic and piezoelectric, magnetostrictive and electro/magneto-rheological fluid types, gears, and leadscrews, are the primary areas of focus in this Section of surface vehicles.

In addition, this Section will address common aspects of different actuator solutions with specific classical, new energy, hybrid, and autonomous surface vehicle aspects, building on the existing research and technologies to support and deal with the difficulty of industrial applications. Accordingly, this Section will provide a platform for the publication of ideas and the derivation and testing of techniques that combine theory, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, leading to future innovations and novel technologies. We aim to bridge the gap between theory and practice and intend to stimulate interaction between faculty, researchers, engineers, and practitioners from academia and industry, focusing on theoretical and applied research in actuator-based surface vehicle systems.

Aim

The aim of this Section is to showcase state-of-the-art work in surface vehicles, with industrial applications of advanced actuators, modeling, system design, fault diagnosis, optimization, and drive and control strategies.

Scope

Topics addressed in this Section include, but are not limited to, the following:

Design solutions and developments of actuators for surface vehicle systems;
Actuator-based surface vehicle systems;
Dynamical modeling, control, and optimization of surface vehicle systems (vehicles, trains, boats, vessels, waveglider, etc.);
Vehicle driving systems;
New energy vehicles and autonomous vehicles;
Cooperative and connected vehicle systems;
Active and passive vehicle safety systems;
Collision avoidance;
Intelligent control and fault diagnosis strategies for surface vehicle systems;
Intelligent transportation systems;
Digital twin systems and human–machine interactions.