Advances in Active Suspension Systems for Road Vehicles

Active suspension systems(ASSs)have been proposed and developed for a few decades,and have now once again become a thriving topic in both academia and industry,due to the high demand for driving comfort and safety and the compatibility of ASSs with vehicle electrification and autonomy.Existing review papers on ASSs mainly cover dynamics modeling and robust control;however,the gap between academic research outcomes and industrial application requirements has not yet been bridged,hindering most ASS research knowledge from being transferred to vehicle companies.This paper comprehensively reviews advances in ASSs for road vehicles,with a focus on hardware structures and control strategies.In particular,state-of-the-art ASSs that have been recently adopted in production cars are discussed in detail,including the representative solutions of Mercedes active body control(ABC)and Audi predictive active suspension;novel concepts that could become alternative candidates are also introduced,including series active variable geometry suspension,and the active wheel-alignment system.ASSs with compact structure,small mass increment,low power consumption,high-frequency response,acceptable economic costs,and high reliability are more likely to be adopted by car manufacturers.In terms of control strategies,the development of future ASSs aims not only to stabilize the chassis attitude and attenuate the chassis vibration,but also to enable ASSs to cooperate with other modules(e.g.,steering and braking)and sensors(e.g.,cameras)within a car,and even with high-level decision-making(e.g.,reference driving speed)in the overall transportation system-strategies that will be compatible with the rapidly developing electric and autonomous vehicles.

COMPOSITIVE EMISSION CONTROL SYSTEM OF GASOLINE VEHICLE

The working principle of a kind of compositive emission control system is inquired into, which includes exhaust heater, secondary air supplement, exhaust gas recirculation （EGR）, thermal reactor and catalytic converter, etc. The purification effect of CO, HC and NOx emission of the gasoline spark ignite （S.I.） engine is studied. The entire vehicle driving cycle tests based on the national emission standard and a series of the gasoline engine-testing bench tests including full load characteristic experiment, load characteristic experiment and idle speed experiment are done. The results show that the system has a very good emission control effect to CO, HC and NOx of gasoline engine. The construction of the system is very simple and can be mounted on the exhaust pipe conveniently without any alteration of the vehicle-use gasoline engine.

A Hybrid Approach to Modeling and Control of Vehicle Height for Electronically Controlled Air Suspension

The control problems associated with vehicle height adjustment of electronically controlled air suspension （ECAS） still pose theoretical challenges for researchers, which manifest themselves in the publications on this subject over the last years. This paper deals with modeling and control of a vehicle height adjustment system for ECAS, which is an example of a hybrid dynamical system due to the coexistence and coupling of continuous variables and discrete events. A mixed logical dynamical （MLD） modeling approach is chosen for capturing enough details of the vehicle height adjustment process. The hybrid dynamic model is constructed on the basis of some assumptions and piecewise linear approximation for components nonlinearities. Then, the on-off statuses of solenoid valves and the piecewise approximation process are described by propositional logic, and the hybrid system is transformed into the set of linear mixed-integer equalities and inequalities, denoted as MLD model, automatically by HYSDEL. Using this model, a hybrid model predictive controller （HMPC） is tuned based on online mixed-integer quadratic optimization （MIQP）. Two different scenarios are considered in the simulation, whose results verify the height adjustment effectiveness of the proposed approach. Explicit solutions of the controller are computed to control the vehicle height adjustment system in realtime using an offline multi-parametric programming technology （MPT）, thus convert the controller into an equivalent explicit piecewise affine form. Finally, bench experiments for vehicle height lifting, holding and lowering procedures are conducted, which demonstrate that the HMPC can adjust the vehicle height by controlling the on-off statuses of solenoid valves directly. This research proposes a new modeling and control method for vehicle height adjustment of ECAS, which leads to a closed-loop system with favorable dynamical properties.

Post-Impact Motion Planning and Tracking Control for Autonomous Vehicles

There is an increasing awareness of the need to reduce traffic accidents and fatality due to vehicle collision.Post-impact hazards can be more serious as the driver may fail to maintain effective control after collisions.To avoid subsequent crash events and to stabilize the vehicle,this paper proposes a post-impact motion planning and stability control method for autonomous vehicles.An enabling motion planning method is proposed for post-impact situations by combining the polynomial curve and artificial potential field while considering obstacle avoidance.A hierarchical controller that consists of an upper and a lower controller is then developed to track the planned motion.In the upper controller,a time-varying linear quadratic regulator is presented to calculate the desired generalized forces.In the lower controller,a nonlinear-optimization-based torque allocation algorithm is proposed to optimally coordinate the actuators to realize the desired generalized forces.The proposed scheme is verified under comprehensive driving scenarios through hardware-in-loop tests.

Coordinated Control Architecture for Motion Management in ADAS Systems

Advanced driver assistance systems(ADAS) seek to provide drivers and passengers of automotive vehicles increased safety and comfort. Original equipment manufacturers are integrating and developing systems for distance keeping, lane keeping and changing and other functionalities. The modern automobile is a complex system of systems. How the functionalities of advanced driver assistance are implemented and coordinated across the systems of the vehicle is generally not made available to the wider research community by the developers and manufactures. This paper seeks to begin filling this gap by assembling open source physics models of the vehicle dynamics and ADAS command models. Additionally, in order to facilitate ADAS development and testing without having access to the details of ADAS, a coordinated control architecture for motion management is also proposed for distributing ADAS motion control commands over vehicle systems. The architecture is demonstrated in a case study where motion is coordinated between the steering and the braking systems, which are typically used only for a single functionality. The integrated vehicle and system dynamics using the coordinated control architecture are simulated for various driving tasks. It is seen that improved trajectory following can be achieved by the proposed coordinated control architecture. The models, simulations and control architecture are made available for open access.

Direct Yaw Moment Control for Distributed Drive Electric Vehicle Handling Performance Improvement

For a distributed drive electric vehicle（DDEV） driven by four in-wheel motors, advanced vehicle dynamic control methods can be realized easily because motors can be controlled independently, quickly and precisely. And direct yaw-moment control（DYC） has been widely studied and applied to vehicle stability control. Good vehicle handling performance： quick yaw rate transient response, small overshoot, high steady yaw rate gain, etc, is required by drivers under normal conditions, which is less concerned, however. Based on the hierarchical control methodology, a novel control system using direct yaw moment control for improving handling performance of a distributed drive electric vehicle especially under normal driving conditions has been proposed. The upper-loop control system consists of two parts： a state feedback controller, which aims to realize the ideal transient response of yaw rate, with a vehicle sideslip angle observer; and a steering wheel angle feedforward controller designed to achieve a desired yaw rate steady gain. Under the restriction of the effect of poles and zeros in the closed-loop transfer function on the system response and the capacity of in-wheel motors, the integrated time and absolute error（ITAE） function is utilized as the cost function in the optimal control to calculate the ideal eigen frequency and damper coefficient of the system and obtain optimal feedback matrix and feedforward matrix. Simulations and experiments with a DDEV under multiple maneuvers are carried out and show the effectiveness of the proposed method： yaw rate rising time is reduced, steady yaw rate gain is increased, vehicle steering characteristic is close to neutral steer and drivers burdens are also reduced. The control system improves vehicle handling performance under normal conditions in both transient and steady response. State feedback control instead of model following control is introduced in the control system so that the sense of control intervention to drivers is relieved.

A Novel Pre-control Method of Vehicle Dynamics Stability Based on Critical Stable Velocity during Transient Steering Maneuvering

The current research of direct yaw moment control（DYC） system focus on the design of target yaw moment and the distribution of wheel brake force. The differential braking intervention can effectively improve the lateral stability of the vehicle, however, the effect of DYC can be improved a step further by applying the control of vehicle longitudinal velocity. In this paper, the relationship between the vehicle longitudinal velocity and lateral stability is studied, and the simulation results show that a decrease of 5 km/h of longitudinal velocity at a particular situation can bring 100° increasing of stable steering upper limit. A critical stable velocity considering the effect of steering and yaw rate measurement is defined to evaluate the risk of losing steer-ability or stability. A novel velocity pre-control method is proposed by using a hierarchical pre-control logic and is integrated with the traditional DYC system. The control algorithm is verified through a hardware in-the-loop simulation system. Double lane change（DLC） test results on both high friction coefficient（μ） and low μ roads show that by using the pre-control method, the steering effort in DLC test can be reduced by 38% and 51% and the peak value of brake pressure control can be reduced by 20% and 12% respectively on high μ and low μ roads, the lateral stability is also improved. This research proposes a novel DYC system with lighter control effort and better control effect.

Neural Network Based Feedback Linearization Control of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

This paper presents a flight control design for an unmanned aerial vehicle （UAV） using a nonlinear autoregressive moving average （NARMA-L2） neural network based feedback linearization and output redefinition technique. The UAV investigated is non- minimum phase. The output redefinition technique is used in such a way that the resulting system to be inverted is a minimum phase system. The NARMA-L2 neural network is trained off-line for forward dynamics of the UAV model with redefined output and is then inverted to force the real output to approximately track a command input. Simulation results show that the proposed approaches have good performance.

Research on Direct Yaw Moment Control Strategy of Distributed-Drive Electric Vehicle Based on Joint Observer

Combined with the characteristics of the distributed-drive electric vehicle and direct yaw moment control,a double-layer structure direct yaw moment controller is designed.The upper additional yaw moment controller is constructed based on model predictive control.Aiming at minimizing the utilization rate of tire adhesion and constrained by the working characteristics of motor system and brake system,a quadratic programming active set was designed to optimize the distribution of additional yaw moments.The road surface adhesion coefficient has a great impact on the reliability of direct yaw moment control,for which joint observer of vehicle state parameters and road surface parameters is designed by using unscented Kalman filter algorithm,which correlates vehicle state observer and road surface parameter observer to form closed-loop feedback correction.The results show that compared to the“feedforward+feedback”control,the vehicle’s error of yaw rate and sideslip angle by the model predictive control is smaller,which can improve the vehicle stability effectively.In addition,according to the results of the docking road simulation test,the joint observer of vehicle state and road surface parameters can improve the adaptability of the vehicle stability controller to the road conditions with variable adhesion coefficients.

Combined Control Allocation and Sliding Mode Control in the Dynamic Control of a Vehicle with Eight In-Wheel Motors

An eight wheel independently driving steering（8 WIDBS）electric vehicle is studied in this paper.The vehicle is equipped with eight in-wheel motors and a steer-by-wire system.A hierarchically coordinated vehicle dynamic control（HCVDC）system,including a high-level vehicle motion controller,a control allocation,an inverse tire model and a lower-level slip/slip angle controller,is proposed for the over-actuated vehicle system.The high-level sliding mode vehicle motion controller is designed to produce desired total forces and yaw moment,distributed to longitudinal and lateral forces of each tire by an advanced control allocation method.And the slip controller is designed to use a sliding mode control method to follow the desired slip ratios by manipulating the corresponding in-wheel motor torques.Evaluation of the overall system is accomplished by sine maneuver simulation.Simulation results confirm that the proposed control system can coordinate among the redundant and constrained actuators to achieve the vehicle dynamic control task and improve the vehicle stability.

Guest Editorial for Special Issue on Autonomous Control of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

IN recent years,unmanned aerial vehicles(UAVs)have been widely employed in different applications,both military and civilian.Especially,a fast growing civil UAV market is predicted over the next decades.However,most currently developed UAVs depend on simple control strategy.They require exact modeling of the UAVs dynamics and are vulnerable to external disturbance.Therefore,there is great

Active suspension with optimal control based on a full vehicle model

The 7-DOF model of a full vehicle with an active suspension is developed in this paper.The model is written into the state equation style.Actuator forces are treated as inputs in the state equations.Based on the basic optimal control theory,the optimal gains for the control system are figured out.So an optimal controller is developed and implemented using Matlab/Simulink,where the Riccati equation with coupling terms is deduced using the Hamilton equation.The all state feedback is chosen for the controller.The gains for all vehicle variables are traded off so that majority of indexes were up to optimal.The active suspension with optimal control is simulated in frequency domain and time domain separately,and compared with a passive suspension.Throughout all the simulation results,the optimal controller developed in this paper works well in the majority of instances.In all,the comfort and ride performance of the vehicle are improved under the active suspension with optimal control.

A Modified Oppositional Chaotic Local Search Strategy Based Aquila Optimizer to Design an Effective Controller for Vehicle Cruise Control System

In this work,we propose a real proportional-integral-derivative plus second-order derivative(PIDD2)controller as an efficient controller for vehicle cruise control systems to address the challenging issues related to efficient operation.In this regard,this paper is the first report in the literature demonstrating the implementation of a real PIDD2 controller for controlling the respective system.We construct a novel and efficient metaheuristic algorithm by improving the performance of the Aquila Optimizer via chaotic local search and modified opposition-based learning strategies and use it as an excellently performing tuning mechanism.We also propose a simple yet effective objective function to increase the performance of the proposed algorithm(CmOBL-AO)to adjust the real PIDD2 controller's parameters effectively.We show the CmOBL-AO algorithm to perform better than the differential evolution algorithm,gravitational search algorithm,African vultures optimization,and the Aquila Optimizer using well-known unimodal,multimodal benchmark functions.CEC2019 test suite is also used to perform ablation experiments to reveal the separate contributions of chaotic local search and modified opposition-based learning strategies to the CmOBL-AO algorithm.For the vehicle cruise control system,we confirm the more excellent performance of the proposed method against particle swarm,gray wolf,salp swarm,and original Aquila optimizers using statistical,Wilcoxon signed-rank,time response,robustness,and disturbance rejection analyses.We also use fourteen reported methods in the literature for the vehicle cruise control system to further verify the more promising performance of the CmOBL-AO-based real PIDD2 controller from a wider perspective.The excellent performance of the proposed method is also illustrated through different quality indicators and different operating speeds.Lastly,we also demonstrate the good performing capability of the CmOBL-AO algorithm for real traffic cases.We show the CmOBL-AO-based real PIDD2 controller as the most efficient method to control a vehicle cruise control system.

A review of vehicle speed control strategies

Currently,traffic problems in urban road traffic environments remain severe,traffic pollution and congestion have not been effectively improved,and traffic accidents are still frequent.Traditional traffic signal control methods have little effect on these problems.With the continuous improvement of communication technology and network connections,vehicle speed guidance provides a new idea for solving the above problems and has gradually become a popular topic in academic research.However,its generalization has shortcomings.Therefore,this paper summarizes the research on vehicle speed control strategies in urban road environments and provides suggestions for future research.In this paper,we summarize the existing research in four parts.First,we categorize existing research based on vehicle type.Second,the vehicle speed guidance problem is divided according to the problem research scene.Third,we summarize the existing literature regarding vehicle speed.Finally,we summarize the methods used for speed guidance.Through an analysis of the existing literature,it is concluded that there is a deficiency in the existing research,and suggestions for the future of vehicle speed guidance research are suggested.

Application of Fuzzy Logic for Autonomous Bay Parking of Automobiles

In this paper, we investigate the control problem of autonomous bay parking system. We choose a referenced parking lot and define a suitable parking spot based on some measurements at various places. A kinetic model is set up for the convenience of analysis and simulation. The pose of the car during the parking procedure can be determined by the initial pose, the backward speed, and the steering angle of the wheel. Then, both a fuzzy speed controller and a fuzzy steering controller are designed for the bay parking. Finally, simulation results show the effectiveness of our designed controllers.

Control System of Two-Wheel Self-Balancing Vehicle

This study mainly concerns a motion model and the main control algorithm of two-wheel self-balancing vehicle models.Details of the critical parameters fetching and output value of two-wheel self-balancing vehicle models are introduced,including those concerning balance control,speed control and direction control.An improved cascade coupling control scheme is proposed for two-wheel vehicles,based on a proportional-integral-derivative(PID)control algorithm.Moreover,a thorough comparison between a classic control system and the improved system is provided,and all aspects thereof are analyzed.It is determined that the control performance of the two-wheel self-balancing vehicle system based on the PID control algorithm is reliable,enabling the vehicle body to maintain balance while moving smoothly along a road at a fast average speed with better practical per-formance.

Establishment, maintenance, and re-establishment of the safe and efficient steady-following state

We present an integrated mathematical model of vehicle-following control for the establishment, maintenance, and re-establishment of the previous or new safe and efficient steady-following state. The hyperbolic functions are introduced to establish the corresponding mathematical models, which can describe the behavioral adjustment of the following vehicle steered by a well-experienced driver under complex vehicle following situations. According to the proposed mathematical models, the control laws of the following vehicle adjusting its own behavior can be calculated for its moving in safety,efficiency, and smoothness(comfort). Simulation results show that the safe and efficient steady-following state can be well established, maintained, and re-established by its own smooth(comfortable) behavioral adjustment with the synchronous control of the following vehicle’s velocity, acceleration, and the actual following distance.

Collision mitigation and vehicle transportation safety using integrated vehicle dynamics control systems

The aim of this paper is to investigate the effect of vehicle dynamics control systems （VDCS） on both the collision of the vehicle body and the kinematic behaviour of the ve- hicle＇s occupant in case of offset frontal vehicle-to-vehicle collision. A unique 6-degree-of- freedom （6-DOF） vehicle dynamics/crash mathematical model and a simplified lumped mass occupant model are developed. The first model is used to define the vehicle body crash parameters and it integrates a vehicle dynamics model with a vehicle front-end structure model. The second model aims to predict the effect of VDCS on the kinematics of the occupant. It is shown from the numerical simulations that the vehicle dynamics/crash response and occupant behaviour can be captured and analysed quickly and accurately. Yurthermore, it is shown that the VDCS can affect the crash characteristics positively and the occupant behaviour is improved.

Safety effects of work zone advisory systems under the intelligent connected vehicle environment:a microsimulation approach

Purpose–This study aims to investigate the safety effects of work zone advisory systems.The traditional system includes a dynamic message sign(DMS),whereas the advanced system includes an in-vehicle work zone warning application under the connected vehicle(CV)environment.Design/methodology/approach–A comparative analysis was conducted based on the microsimulation experiments.Findings–The results indicate that the CV-based warning system outperforms the DMS.From this study,the optimal distances of placing a DMS varies according to different traffic conditions.Nevertheless,negative influence of excessive distance DMS placed from the work zone would be more obvious when there is heavier traffic volume.Thus,it is recommended that the optimal distance DMS placed from the work zone should be shortened if there is a traffic congestion.It was also revealed that higher market penetration rate of CVs will lead to safer network under good traffic conditions.Research limitations/implications–Because this study used only microsimulation,the results do not reflect the real-world drivers’reactions to DMS and CV warning messages.A series of driving simulator experiments need to be conducted to capture the real driving behaviors so as to investigate the unresolved-related issues.Human machine interface needs be used to simulate the process of in-vehicle warning information delivery.The validation of the simulation model was not conducted because of the data limitation.Practical implications–It suggests for the optimal DMS placement for improving the overall efficiency and safety under the CV environment.Originality/value–A traffic network evaluation method considering both efficiency and safety is proposed by applying traffic simulation.