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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Deep reinforcement learning-based drift parking control of automated vehicles

Drift parking usually requires precise control of a vehicle by a professional driver,which can reflect the performance of the vehicle under critical conditions.The obstacles to implementing this action include the high coupling between the longitudinal and lateral states,the high precision required for the vehicle initial state when the drift is triggered,and the difficulty in determining the reference state variables in the drift process.A two-segment drift parking control system is proposed in this paper.In the approaching control segment,the vehicle achieves the drift-triggered vehicle speed and pose,which relies on a pathtracking algorithm based on linear time-varying model predictive control.In the drifting control segment,the deep reinforcement learning algorithm twin-delayed deep deterministic policy gradient is creatively introduced to the controller design.It solves the precise vehicle motion control problem under the condition of the rear wheels having locked brakes.Through various simulations,the superiority and robustness to different initial conditions and abrupt changes in the parking space are verified.The effectiveness of the proposed control system is verified by a ground test.

An optimization strategy of controlled electric vehicle charging considering demand side response and regional wind and photovoltaic

Renewable energy,such as wind and photovoltaic(PV),produces intermittent and variable power output.When superimposed on the load curve,it transforms the load curve into a‘load belt’,i.e.a range.Furthermore,the large scale development of electric vehicle(EV)will also have a significant impact on power grid in general and load characteristics in particular.This paper aims to develop a controlled EV charging strategy to optimize the peak-valley difference of the grid when considering the regional wind and PV power outputs.The probabilistic model of wind and PV power outputs is developed.Based on the probabilistic model,the method of assessing the peak-valley difference of the stochastic load curve is put forward,and a two-stage peak-valley price model is built for controlled EV charging.On this basis,an optimization model is built,in which genetic algorithms are used to determine the start and end time of the valley price,as well as the peak-valley price.Finally,the effectiveness and rationality of the method are proved by the calculation result of the example.

Deworming of stray dogs and wild canines with praziquantel-laced baits delivered by an unmanned aerial vehicle in areas highly endemic for echinococcosis in China

Background:Canines,the definitive hosts for the parasites causing alveolar(AE)and cystic echinococcosis(CE),are the main source of this infections playing the key role in the transmission.The ten-year mortality rate of AE is extremely high(94%)if the patients are not given sustained treatment.The aim of this field study is to explore the possibility of delivery of praziquantel-laced baits using unmanned aerial vehicles(UAVs)aimed at deworming wild canines in the endemic areas.Methods:UAVs were compared to manual bait delivery in the 1-km^(2)test areas followed by testing of canine faeces using an Echinococcus coproantigen ELISA test in the ensuing year.The outcomes of the two approaches were compared with respect to time of delivery and overall cost.Findings:Compared to manual bait delivery,delivery by UAVs saved up to 67%of the overall cost.Three times more staff was needed for the former approach compared to the latter and,time wise,UAV bait delivery saved 350%compared to manual bait delivery on average.With regard to investment needed,the use of UAVs showed an efficiency 2.5 times better than manual bait delivery.Compared to the area served by UAVs,the average positive rate for the canine faecal samples was more than 38%higher in the area served manually.Conclusion:The technique of bait delivery with praziquantel using UAVs for canine deworming has a strong potential with regard to savings of manpower,time and overall cost in areas highly endemic for echinococcosis.

Non-fragile switching tracking control for a flexible air-breathing hypersonic vehicle based on polytopic LPV model

This article proposes a linear parameter varying （LPV） switching tracking control scheme for a flexible air-breathing hypersonic vehicle （FAHV）. First, a polytopic LPV model is constructed to represent the complex nonlinear longitudinal model of the FAHV by using Jacobian linearization and tensor-product （T-P） model transformation approach. Second, for less conservative controller design purpose, the flight envelope is divided into four sub-regions and a non-fragile LPV controller is designed for each parameter sub-region. These non-fragile LPV controllers are then switched in order to guarantee the closed-loop FAHV system to be asymptotically stable and satisfy a specified performance criterion. The desired non-fragile LPV switching controller is found by solving a convex constraint problem which can be efficiently solved using available linear matrix inequality （LMI） techniques, and robust stability analysis of the closed-loop FAHV system is verified based on multiple Lypapunov functions （MLFs）. Finally, numerical simulations have demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed approach.