Course Tracking Control Algorithm Using Visual Information

Automatic steering control algorithm has been proposed, which uses the motion of objects in a visual image (Optical Flow) obtained from an ITV camera looking ahead in the situation without forward vehicles. This algorithm is improved to be applicable to the situation in which the forward tracking course is invisible owing to the interfarence of the forward vehicles. The adjustment of the control parameters against the change in vehicle speed is confirmed by the computer simulation experiments.     

Ride Dynamics of Articulated Vehicles–A Literature Survey

SUMMARY

This paper presents a review of the available literature describing the methods of modelling the vibrational response of articulated vehicles to the road inputs at the tire contact points. It states and discusses the mathematical techniques that have been put forward for obtaining road input characteristics, for modelling the vehicles in a range of degrees of freedom, and for performing the analysis necessary to obtain the vibrational response. Finally the indices that have been proposed for ride comfort and ride safety are given and the manner in which various researchers relate these to the vibrational characteristics of the vehicles is described.     

Roll angle estimator based on angular rate measurements for bicycles

ABSTRACT

Measuring the roll angle of single-track vehicles has always been a challenging task; however, accurate and reliable measurements of this magnitude are paramount for controlling the stability of these vehicles, both for autonomous riding and for safety reasons. A roll angle estimation is also useful in other situations, such as tests to perform the identification of the parameters of the rider control. In this work, a new algorithm is presented for estimating the roll angle of bicycles. This estimator, based on the well-known Kalman filter, employs a wheel speed sensor to approximate the speed of the vehicle, and three angular rate sensors, which are currently small and affordable sensors. The proposed method was implemented in a microcontroller and tested in a bicycle and the results were compared with measurements obtained with optical sensors, showing a good correlation. Although it has not been tested in motorcycles, comparable results are expected.     

Road Vehicle Suspension System Design - a review

SUMMARY

Based mainly on English language literature, information relating to the design of automobile suspension systems for ride comfort and control of wheel load variations for frequencies below body structure resonances is reviewed. The information is interpreted in the context of vehicles which travel through a wide speed range on roads of markedly differing quality, which do so carrying different loads and which are required to possess good handling qualities.

Sections are devoted to describing road surfaces, modelling vehicles and setting up performance criteria, and to passive, active, semi-active and slow-active system types. Methods for deriving active system control laws are outlined. Strengths and weaknesses of the various systems are identified and their relative performance capabilities and equipment requirements are discussed. Attention is given to adaptation of the suspension or control system parameters to changing conditions. Remaining research needs are considered.     

A Comparision of Spacing and Headway Control Laws for Automatically Controlled Vehicles1

SUMMARY

This paper investigates two different longitudinal control policies for automatically controlled vehicles. One is based on maintaining a constant spacing between the vehicles while the other is based upon maintaining a constant headway (or time) between successive vehicles. To avoid collisions in the platoon, controllers have to be designed to ensure string stability, i.e the spacing errors should not get amplified as they propagate upstream from vehicle to vehicle. A measure of string stability is introduced and a systematic method of designing constant spacing controllers which guarantee string stability is presented. The constant headway policy does not require inter-vehicle communication to assure string stablity. Also, since inter-vehicle communication is not required it can be used in systems with mixed automated-nonautomated vehicles, e.g for AICC (Autonomous Intelligent Cruise Control). It is shown in this paper that for all the autonomous headway control laws, the desired control torques are inversely proportional to the headway time.     

Validation of Railway Vehicle Lateral Dynamics Models

SUMMARY

The general form of the railway vehicle lateral dynamic predictions seems to have been proven. If wheels are coned, rails are of uniform cross-section, and suspensions are linear, then good predictions can be obtained. If wheels are not coned, and rail sections vary, but the suspension is relatively linear, as in modern vehicles, it is still possible to obtain good predictions of critical speed for flexible suspensions. The situation with “stiff” vehicles remains unproven. In each case dynamic response calculations will be only as good as the knowledge of the track input including the rolling line term. The validity of making calculations to predict critical speeds of very non-linear vehicles has not yet been convincingly demonstrated. Validation experiments for the more difficult case of time history representation suggest the possibility of correct prediction for easily comprehensible vehicles, but even this requires an enormous amount of supportive experimental work.     

Active Controls in Ground Transportation — A Review of the State-of-the-Art and Future Potential

SUMMARY

Active control systems offer significant functional advantages over passive systems; their introduction into production-line vehicles, however, is cautious and slow. This survey describes the recent progress in the analysis, design and technology of active controls in vehicles. It includes the state-of-the-art of their introduction into operation as well as their future potential in view of recent advances in technology and computer aided design strategies. The survey has been limited to suspensions for vehicles on roads and tracks.     

Effects of Model Complexity on the Performance of Automated Vehicle Steering Controllers: Controller Development and Evaluation

SUMMARY

Due to increased traffic congestion and travel times, research in Advanced Vehicle Control Systems (AVCS) has focused on automated lateral and headway control. Automated vehicles are seen as a way to increase freeway capacity and vehicle speeds while reducing accidents due to human error. Recent research in automated lateral control has focused on vehicle control during low-g maneuvers. To increase safety, automated lateral controllers will need to recognize and react to emergency situations.

This paper investigates the effects of vehicle and tire model order on the response of automated vehicles to an emergency step lane change using a controller based on linear vehicle and tire models. From these studies it is concluded that control strategies based solely on linear vehicle and tire models are inadequate for emergency vehicle maneuvers.

A strategy is then proposed to automatically control vehicles through emergency maneuvers. Here the response of a nonlinear vehicle model is used with a linear state model to optimize controller gains for nonlinear maneuvers. An emergency step lane change is used as a preliminary test of the method.     

Dynamics of Actively Guided Vehicles

SUMMARY

In spite of considerable interest in active controls for a wide variety of road and rail vehicles comparatively little work has been carried out on the dynamics of actively guided vehicles in which steering is carried out in response to signals from a controller seeking to follow a given path or track. Drawing from the relevant fields of guided rubber tyred vehicles, rail vehicles and mobile robots the common basis of the dynamics of active guidance is discussed,and this simple theoretical framework is then followed by a review of work in this field. Attention is restricted to wheeled vehicles.     

Flow-field guided steering control for rigid autonomous ground vehicles in low-speed manoeuvring

ABSTRACT

This paper studies the low-speed manoeuvring problem for autono-mous ground vehicles operating in complex static environments. Making use of the intrinsic property of a fluid to naturally find its way to an outflow destination, a novel guidance method is proposed. In this approach, a reference flow field is calculated numerically through Computational Fluid Dynamics, based on which both the reference path topology and the steering reference to achieve the path are derived in a single process. Steering control considers three constraints: obstacle and boundary avoidance, rigidity of the vehicle, plus the non-holonomic velocity constraints due to the steering system. The influences of the parameters used during the flow field simulation and the control algorithm are discussed through numerical cases. A divergency field is defined to evaluate the quality of the flow field in guiding the vehicle. This is used to identify any problematic branching features of the flow, and control is adapted in the neighbourhood of such branching features to resolve possible ambiguities in the control reference. Results demonstrate the effectiveness of the method in finding smooth and feasible motion paths, even in complex environments.     

Twenty First Century Transportation System Solutions - a New Type of Small,Relatively Tall and Narrow Active Tilting Commuter Vehicle

SUMMARY

There are many problems that face transportation systems as the twenty-first century approaches, and many solutions will be required. Mass transportation systems are one large area of research that will provide some solutions. This paper presents another possible solution at the other end of the spectrum, small relatively tall and narrow tilting commuter vehicles for individual transportation. A historical overview of the various types of tilting vehicles built or proposed over the last forty years is shown and the results of these studies are discussed. If one considers a relatively tall and narrow vehicle, (under 1.0 meters or 40“ wide), to maintain high speed performance in cornering it becomes necessary to bank the vehicle into a corner to prevent overturning. The design of a modem active tilting suspension and control law for a small narrow, one-half width, commuter vehicles is presented. Analysis of the static and dynamic tipping limits illustrates which vehicles are considered tall and narrow requiring active tilting. The performance of such vehicles as they enter a steady corner is considered and how tilt dynamics may feel to passengers is discussed.     

Hybrid Laboratory Test Method for Anti-Lock Systems

SUMMARY

Railway vehicles with steered axles possess some unique dynamic characteristics. This paper reviews the reasons for the differences between these and more conventional vehicles and examines the results of analysis demonstrating the sensitivity of the phenomena to various mass, stiffness and geometric parameters. The implications which these results carry are discussed in terms of their design importance and their effect upon the performance boundaries of steel-wheeled rail vehicles. This review shows that a profound understanding of steered axle railway vehicles is developing and that this leads to the conclusion that a wide range of applications can benefit from their use.     

Human Control of Road Vehicles

SUMMARY

This paper reviews the present state of knowledge of human control of road vehicles. Lateral and longitudinal control of motorcycles and automobiles are discussed, whenever information is available. Although knowledge has increased greatly in the last decade, the major part of this concerns lateral control and most is of an ad hoc nature. Adequate mathematical models for longitudinal motion of the vehicle are yet to be developed. Their development is a necessary step in the attainment of a complete understanding of longitudinal control.     

Vision-based fusion of robust lane tracking and forward vehicle detection in a real driving environment

With the goal of developing an accurate and fast lane tracking system for the purpose of driver assistance, this paper proposes a vision-based fusion technique for lane tracking and forward vehicle detection to handle challenging conditions, i.e., lane occlusion by a forward vehicle, lane change, varying illumination, road traffic signs, and pitch motion, all of which often occur in real driving environments. First, our algorithm uses random sample consensus (RANSAC) and Kalman filtering to calculate the lane equation from the lane candidates found by template matching. Simple template matching and a combination of RANSAC and Kalman filtering makes calculating the lane equation as a hyperbola pair very quick and robust against varying illumination and discontinuities in the lane. Second, our algorithm uses a state transfer technique to maintain lane tracking continuously in spite of the lane changing situation. This reduces the computational time when dealing with the lane change because lane detection, which takes much more time than lane tracking, is not necessary with this algorithm. Third, false lane candidates from occlusions by frontal vehicles are eliminated using accurate regions of the forward vehicles from our improved forward vehicle detector. Fourth, our proposed method achieved robustness against road traffic signs and pitch motion using the adaptive region of interest and a constraint on the position of the vanishing point. Our algorithm was tested with image sequences from a real driving situation and demonstrated its robustness.     

Effects of Model Complexity on the Performance of Automated Vehicle Steering Controllers: Model Development,Validation and Comparison

SUMMARY

Recent research on autonomous highway vehicles has begun to focus on lateral control strategies. The initial work has focused on vehicle control during low-g maneuvers at constant vehicle speed, typical of lane merging and normal highway driving. In this paper, and its companion paper, to follow, the lateral control of vehicles during high-g emergency maneuvers is addressed. Models of the vehicle dynamics are developed, showing the accuracy of the different models under low and high-g conditions. Specifically, body roll, tire and drive-train dynamics, tire force saturation, and tire side force lag are shown to be important effects to include in models for emergency maneuvers. Current controllers, designed for low-g maneuvers only, neglect these effects. The follow on paper demonstrates the performance of lateral controllers during high-g lateral emergency maneuvers using these vehicle models.     

Cooperative lateral vehicle control for autonomous valet parking

This paper presents a lateral vehicle control algorithm for autonomous valet parking (AVP). Under the assumption that the position and heading angle are provided via vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication, the lateral controller aims to conduct two different driving maneuvers, i.e., forward driving and backward parking, and to control various types of vehicles in a unified approach. Therefore, it is necessary for the lateral controller to be robust enough to track the desired trajectories for different driving maneuvers, as well as to compensate for the uncertainty caused by the need to consider various vehicle types. With the assumption of operating conditions such as a low speed and small slip angle, a nonlinear kinematic model with kinematic constraints is used for the design of the lateral control. Based on this nonlinear model, a nonlinear control technique called dynamic surface control (DSC) is applied to design the lateral controller, and its stability is analyzed in the framework of linear differential inclusion. Finally, the proposed lateral control algorithm is validated through vehicle simulations and field tests.     

A study on speed control law for automated driving of heavy-duty vehicles considering acceleration characteristics (simulation of transient responses)

In order to develop a proper speed control technique for automated driving of heavy-duty vehicles, in the situation of mixed traffic of heavy-duty vehicles and passengers cars, a simulation study is carried out considering the transient characteristics of heavy-duty vehicles in acceleration and deceleration. The control performance is observed and some problems to be solved are listed as follows: (1) to check control performance for time-dependent target speed and distance (2) to improve the control algorithms to suppress chattering of the acceleration.     

Simulation of Multibody Vehicles Moving over Elastic Guideways1

SUMMARY

This paper describes the present state of a general purpose computer program for calculating the dynamic response of vehicles travelling over guideways which may be elastic.

The linearized state-equations of motion for general multibody vehicles are constructed automatically by the program, these equations are supplemented by the equations for the active subsystems. Finally, the vehicle system equations are combined with the modal equations for elastic guideways and the complete set of coupled equations is solved simultaneously by numerical integration.     

Extended Ground-Hook - New Concept of Semi-Active Control of Truck's Suspension

SUMMARY

This paper deals with the novel control concept, so called ground-hook for active and mainly semi-active suspension of vehicles with the ultimate objective to minimize the tyre-road forces and thus the road damage. The basic ground-hook concept is extended to the several variants which enable to decrease criteria of road damage as well as to increase driver's comfort for a broad range of road unevennesses. Parameters of control law are determined by the parameter optimization for generally nonlinear model. The influence and interaction of the damping rate limits and time constants of variable shock absorbers are also taken into account. The influence of implementation of more complicated truck models is also discussed.