Search Results (17)

This study presents an adaptive integrated chassis control strategy for enhancing vehicle stability under different road conditions, specifically through the real-time estimation of tire cornering stiffness. A hierarchical control architecture is developed, combining active front steering (AFS) and direct yaw moment control (DYC). A recursive regularized weighted least squares algorithm is designed to estimate tire cornering stiffness from measurable vehicle states, eliminating the need for additional tire sensors. Leveraging this estimation, an adaptive sliding mode controller (ASMC) is proposed in the upper layer, where a novel self-tuning mechanism adjusts control parameters based on tire saturation levels and cornering stiffness variation trends. The lower-layer controller employs a weighted least squares allocation method to distribute control efforts while respecting physical and friction constraints. Co-simulations using MATLAB 2018a/Simulink and CarSim validate the effectiveness of the proposed framework under both high- and low-friction scenarios. Compared with conventional ASMC and DYC strategies, the proposed controller exhibits improved robustness, reduced sideslip, and enhanced trajectory tracking performance. The results demonstrate the significance of the real-time integration of tire dynamics into chassis control in improving vehicle handling and stability. Full article

Coordinating vehicle handling stability and energy consumption remains a key challenge for distributed driving electric vehicles (DDEVs). In this paper, a hierarchical torque vectoring control strategy is proposed to address this issue. First, a tire road friction coefficient (TRFC) estimator based on the fusion of vision and dynamic is developed to accurately and promptly obtain the TRFC in the upper layer. Second, a direct yaw moment control (DYC) strategy based on the adaptive model predictive control (MPC) is designed to ensure vehicle stability in the middle layer, where tire cornering stiffness is updated dynamically based on the estimated TRFC. Then, the lower layer develops the torque vectoring allocation controller, which comprehensively considers handling stability and energy consumption and distributes the driving torques among the wheels. The weight between stability and economy is coordinated according to the stability boundaries derived from an extended phase-plane correlated with the TRFC. Finally, Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) simulations are conducted to validate the effectiveness of the proposed strategy. The results demonstrate that compared with the conventional stability torque distribution strategy, the proposed control strategy not only reduces the RMSE of sideslip angle by 44.88% but also decreases the motor power consumption by 24.45% under DLC conditions, which indicates that the proposed method can significantly enhance vehicle handling stability while reducing energy consumption. Full article

To address the performance degradation in model predictive control (MPC) under vehicle state uncertainties caused by external disturbances (e.g., crosswinds and tire cornering stiffness variations) and rigid constraint conflicts, we propose a robust MPC framework with adaptive weight adjustment and dynamic constraint relaxation. Traditional MPC methods often suffer from infeasibility or deteriorated tracking accuracies when handling model mismatches and disturbances. To overcome these limitations, three key innovations are introduced: a three-degree-of-freedom vehicle dynamic model integrated with recursive least squares-based online estimation of tire slip stiffness for real-time lateral force compensation; an adaptive weight adjustment mechanism that dynamically balances control energy consumption and tracking accuracy by tuning cost function weights based on real-time state errors; and a dynamic constraint relaxation strategy using slack variables with variable penalty terms to resolve infeasibility while suppressing excessive constraint violations. The proposed method is validated via ROS (noetic)–MATLAB2023 co-simulations under crosswind disturbances (0–3 m/s) and varying road conditions. The results show that the improved algorithm achieves a 13% faster response time (5.2 s vs. 6 s control cycles), a 15% higher minimum speed during cornering (2.98 m/s vs. 2.51 m/s), a 32% narrower lateral velocity fluctuation range ([−0.11, 0.22] m/s vs. [−0.19, 0.22] m/s), and reduced yaw rate oscillations ([−1.8, 2.8] rad/s vs. [−2.8, 2.5] rad/s) compared with a traditional fixed-weight MPC algorithm. These improvements lead to significant enhancements in trajectory tracking accuracy, dynamic response, and disturbance rejection, ensuring both safety and efficiency in autonomous vehicle control under complex uncertainties. The framework provides a practical solution for real-time applications in intelligent transportation systems. Full article

A coordinated strategy is proposed to prevent interference between trajectory tracking control and stability control in wheel-driven autonomous vehicles. A tire cornering stiffness estimate model is developed using the recursive least squares approach with a forgetting factor (FFRLS), resulting in precise estimation of tire cornering stiffness. An adaptive trajectory tracking control is developed, utilizing real-time updates of tire cornering stiffness; for the direct yaw moment required for stability control, an integral sliding-mode control is adopted, and the chatter problem of the integral sliding-mode controller is optimized by a fuzzy controller. The coordinated control of trajectory tracking and vehicle stability is ultimately attained through the application of the normalized stability index. The method’s practicality is validated by the hardware-in-the-loop simulation platform. Full article

The field of autonomous vehicle technology has experienced remarkable growth. A pivotal trend in this development is the enhancement of tracking performance and stability under high-speed conditions. Model predictive control (MPC), as a prevalent motion control method, necessitates an extended prediction horizon as vehicle speed increases and will lead to heightened online computational demands. To address this, a path preview strategy is integrated into the MPC framework that temporarily freezes the vehicle state within the prediction horizon. This approach assumes that the vehicle state will remain consistent for a specified preview distance and duration, effectively extending the prediction horizon for the MPC controller. In addition, a stability controller is designed to maintain handling stability under high-speed conditions, in which a square-root cubature Kalman filter (SRCKF) estimator is employed to predict tire forces to facilitate the cornering stiffness estimation of vehicle tires. The double lane change maneuver under high-speed conditions is conducted through the Carsim/Simulink co-simulation. The outcomes demonstrate that the SRCKF estimator could provide a reasonably accurate estimation of lateral tire forces throughout the whole traveling process and facilitates the stability controller to guarantee the handling stability. On the premise of ensuring handling stability, integrating the preview strategy could nearly double the prediction horizon for MPC, resulting in the limited increase of online computation burden brought while maintaining path tracking accuracy. Full article

The accuracy of the control model is essential for the effectiveness of model-based control methods. However, factors such as model simplification, parameter variations, and environmental noise can introduce inaccuracies in vehicle state descriptions, thereby compromising the precision of path tracking. This study introduces data-driven enhancements for an MPC-based path tracking controller in autonomous vehicles (DD-PTC). The approach consists of two parts: firstly, Kolmogorov–Arnold Networks (KANs) are utilized to estimate tire lateral forces and correct tire cornering stiffness, thereby establishing a dynamic predictive model. Secondly, Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) is deployed to accurately capture the unmodeled dynamics of the vehicle to form a comprehensive control model. This enhanced model allows for precise path tracking through steering control. The superiority of DD-PTC is confirmed through extensive testing on the Simulink-CarSim simulation platform, where it consistently surpasses normal MPC and Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR) strategies, especially in minimizing lateral distance errors under challenging driving conditions. Full article

The sideslip angle and the yaw rate are the key state parameters for vehicle handling and stability control. To improve the accuracy of the input parameters and the time-varying characteristics of noise covariance in state estimation, a combined method of recursive least squares with a variable forgetting factor and adaptive iterative extended Kalman filtering is proposed for estimation. Based on the established three-degrees-of-freedom nonlinear model of the vehicle, the variable forgetting factor recursive least squares method is used to identify the tire cornering stiffness and serves as an input for vehicle state estimation. An innovative algorithm is used to optimise the uncertain noise covariance in the iterative extended Kalman filter (IEKF) process. Finally, with the help of the joint simulation of CarSim2019 and Matlab/Simulink R2022a, a distributed drive electric vehicle state parameter estimation model is established, and a simulation analysis of typical working conditions is carried out. Furthermore, an experiment is conducted with the pix moving vehicle and the integrated navigation system. The simulation and experimental results show that, compared to the traditional extended Kalman filter algorithm, the proposed algorithm improves the estimation accuracy of the yaw rate, sideslip angle, and longitudinal speed by 58.17%, 57.2%, and 76.47%, respectively, which shows that the algorithm has a higher estimation accuracy and a stronger applicability to provide accurate state information for vehicle handling and stability control. Full article

Aiming at the problems of the poor trajectory-tracking performance and low control accuracy of unmanned vehicles under complex working conditions, we first estimate the lateral force of tires using the square root cubature Kalman filter (SRCKF) in order to correct the lateral stiffness of the tires online, which reduces the model bias caused by constant lateral stiffness, and then adopt a Gaussian function-based adaptive time-domain model predictive control method to improve the trajectory-tracking control accuracy of unmanned vehicles under complex working conditions. Finally, the proposed control algorithm is validated via Carsim and MATLAB/Simulink joint simulation. The results show that compared with the classical model predictive control (MPC) algorithm, the proposed control algorithm reduces the average lateral tracking error by 73.07% and the peak beta and the peak yaw rate by 50.89% and 47.51%, respectively, so that the unmanned vehicle is able to maintain good tracking performance and control accuracy. Full article

Intelligent vehicle trajectory tracking exhibits problems such as low adaptability, low tracking accuracy, and poor robustness in complex driving environments with uncertain road conditions. Therefore, an improved method of adaptive model predictive control (AMPC) for trajectory tracking was designed in this study to increase the corresponding tracking accuracy and driving stability of intelligent vehicles under uncertain and complex working conditions. First, based on the unscented Kalman filter, longitudinal speed, yaw speed, and lateral acceleration were considered as the observed variables of the measurement equation to estimate the lateral force of the front and rear tires accurately in real time. Subsequently, an adaptive correction estimation strategy for tire cornering stiffness was designed, an AMPC method was established, and a dynamic prediction time-domain adaptive model was constructed for optimization according to vehicle speed and road adhesion conditions. The improved AMPC method for trajectory tracking was then realized. Finally, the control effectiveness and trajectory tracking accuracy of the proposed AMPC technique were verified via co-simulation using CarSim and MATLAB/Simulink. From the results, a low lateral position error and heading angle error in trajectory tracking were obtained under different vehicle driving conditions and road adhesion conditions, producing high trajectory-tracking control accuracy. Thus, this work provides an important reference for improving the adaptability, robustness, and optimization of intelligent vehicle tracking control systems. Full article

In the path tracking control of intelligent vehicles, the traditional linear control method is prone to high tracking errors for uncertain parameters of the steering transmission system and road conditions. Therefore, considering the mechanical friction in the dual-motor autonomous steering system and the nonlinearity of tires, this paper proposes a path tracking control strategy of intelligent vehicles for the dual-motor autonomous steering system that considers nonlinear characteristics. First, a dual-motor autonomous steering system considering mechanical friction and the variation of tire cornering stiffness under different tire–road friction coefficients was established based on the structure of an autonomous steering system. Second, a tire–road friction coefficient estimator was designed based on a PSO-LSTM neural network. The tire cornering stiffness under different tire–road friction coefficients was estimated through the recursive least-square algorithm. Then, the control strategy of the dual-motor autonomous steering system was designed by combining the LQR path tracking controller with the adaptive sliding mode control strategy based on field-oriented control. Here, mechanical friction and the variation of tire cornering stiffness were considered. Finally, simulation and HiL tests validated the method proposed in this paper. The results show that the proposed control strategy significantly improves the tracking accuracy and performance of the dual-motor autonomous steering system for intelligent vehicles. Full article

In this paper, a study on vehicle lateral motion control using an in-wheel motor (IWM) based on tire cornering stiffness estimation is presented. The main purpose of this paper is to develop a lateral motion control that can be implemented considering practical issues in real-world vehicle applications such as driver comfort, high availability, and stable control accuracy. The proposed lateral motion controller for yaw rate tracking is intended to improve vehicle cornering agility. In this paper, we develop a model-based controller with a feedforward control term to accomplish this. In particular, a change in tire cornering stiffness according to the size of the tire slip angle is reflected to improve control accuracy. Finally, the Weighted Least Square (WLS) allocation method optimally distributes the IWM torque to each wheel. Simulation studies confirm that some evaluation factors are improved in terms of cornering performance compared to conventional control algorithms. Full article

The anxiety of driving range and inconvenience of battery recharging has placed high requirements on the energy efficiency of electric vehicles. To reduce driving-wheel slip energy consumption while cornering, a torque vectoring control strategy for a rear-wheel independent-drive (RWID) electric vehicle is proposed. First, the longitudinal linear stiffness of each driving wheel is estimated by using the approach of recursive least squares. Then, an initial differential torque is calculated for reducing their overall tire slippage energy dissipation. However, before the differential torque is applied to the two side of driving wheels, an acceleration slip regulation (ASR) is introduced into the overall control strategy to avoid entering into the tire adhesion saturation region resulting in excessive slip. Finally, the simulations of typical manoeuvring conditions are performed to verify the veracity of the estimated tire longitudinal linear stiffness and effectiveness of the torque vectoring control strategy. As a result, the proposed torque vectoring control leads to the largest reduction of around 17% slip power consumption for the situations carried out above. Full article

Vehicle dynamic parameters are of vital importance to establish feasible vehicle models which are used to provide active controls and automated driving control. However, most vehicle dynamics parameters are difficult to obtain directly. In this paper, a new method, which requires only conventional sensors, is proposed to estimate vehicle dynamic parameters. The influence of vehicle dynamic parameters on vehicle dynamics often involves coupling. To solve the problem of coupling, a two-stage estimation method, consisting of multiple-models and the Unscented Kalman Filter, is proposed in this paper. During the first stage, the longitudinal vehicle dynamics model is used. Through vehicle acceleration/deceleration, this model can be used to estimate the distance between the vehicle centroid and vehicle front, the height of vehicle centroid and tire longitudinal stiffness. The estimated parameter can be used in the second stage. During the second stage, a single-track with roll dynamics vehicle model is adopted. By making vehicle continuous steering, this vehicle model can be used to estimate tire cornering stiffness, the vehicle moment of inertia around the yaw axis and the moment of inertia around the longitudinal axis. The simulation results show that the proposed method is effective and vehicle dynamic parameters can be well estimated. Full article

This paper deals with a Bush plane tire rolling in critical and extreme conditions as shocks and rebounds. The approach adopted is based on previous works on the modelling of Jumbo-Jet tires. A numerical finite element model is used in the simulation of the tire. Firstly, an experimental part is dedicated to study the inner features of the tire. The tire geometry and the materials within it are described. Secondly, a 2D embedded mesh model is developed based on the tire cross-section. Then a 3D model is generated and a runway with rocks and ramps is modelled. The tire behavior while rolling over obstacles is investigated. The simulation results, such as tire deformation, are analyzed. The results show significant deformation of the tire while rolling over ramps and a low lateral stiffness, giving it a significant capacity to absorb shocks. The numerical simulation was developed in order to predict the tire behavior during landing, especially in critical and extreme conditions. Cornering simulations were realized to evaluate the self-aligning moment. The numerical simulation is an efficient tool to estimate the forces transferred to the rim axis in critical and extreme conditions. Full article

Information about the vehicle sideslip angle is crucial for the successful implementation of advanced stability control systems. In production vehicles, sideslip angle is difficult to measure within the desired accuracy level because of high costs and other associated impracticalities. This paper presents a novel framework for estimation of the vehicle sideslip angle. The proposed algorithm utilizes an adaptive tire model in conjunction with a model-based observer. The proposed adaptive tire model is capable of coping with changes to the tire operating conditions. More specifically, extensions have been made to Pacejka’s Magic Formula expressions for the tire cornering stiffness and peak grip level. These model extensions account for variations in the tire inflation pressure, load, tread depth and temperature. The vehicle sideslip estimation algorithm is evaluated through experimental tests done on a rear wheel drive (RWD) vehicle. Detailed experimental results show that the developed system can reliably estimate the vehicle sideslip angle during both steady state and transient maneuvers. Full article