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Model-based approaches to navigation, control, and fault detection that utilize precise nonlinear models of vehicle plant dynamics will enable more accurate control and navigation, assured autonomy, and more complex missions for such vehicles. This paper reports novel theoretical and experimental results addressing the problem of parameter estimation of plant and actuator models for underactuated underwater vehicles operating in 6 degrees-of-freedom (DOF) whose dynamics are modeled by finite-dimensional Newton-Euler equations. This paper reports the first theoretical approach and experimental validation to identify simultaneously plant-model parameters (parameters such as mass, added mass, hydrodynamic drag, and buoyancy) and control-actuator parameters (control-surface models and thruster models) in 6-DOF. Most previously reported studies on parameter identification assume that the control-actuator parameters are known a priori. Moreover, this paper reports the first proof of convergence of the parameter estimates to the true set of parameters for this class of vehicles under a persistence of excitation condition. The reported adaptive identification (AID) algorithm does not require instrumentation of 6-DOF vehicle acceleration, which is required by conventional approaches to parameter estimation such as least squares. Additionally, the reported AID algorithm is applicable under any arbitrary open-loop or closed-loop control law. We report simulation and experimental results for identifying the plant-model and control-actuator parameters for an L3 OceanServer Iver3 autonomous underwater vehicle. We believe this general approach to AID could be extended to apply to other classes of machines and other classes of marine, land, aerial, and space vehicles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relocating the electric motor to a position inside the wheel offers a variety of benefits, such as reduced overall vehicle weight, more efficient production of vehicles, more flexible design and better road handling because of the accurate torque control on each wheel. However, the motor also increases the unsprung mass, which can impair the ride comfort of the vehicle. In this paper, we propose and investigate a control strategy using the vertical component of the driving force provided by an in-wheel motor for better ride comfort and handling dynamics. In the next stage, a mathematical model of the vehicle with coupled longitudinal, lateral, and vertical dynamics was introduced. The parameters of the vehicle were measured and collected from an actual car equipped with in-wheel motors. To analyze the performance of the controller, a model of the vehicle was tested in a series of simulations. The straight-line acceleration test indicated an improvement to the ride comfort of 31.8% in terms of the RMS vertical vibrations of the sprung mass. The control is achieved without any deterioration of the tire load and the vehicle's longitudinal dynamics. The stable lateral dynamics of the controlled vehicle was confirmed using a sine-sweep steering excitation, conducted on a perfectly smooth road surface with a constant longitudinal acceleration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A novel vehicle dynamic model considering the coupling mechanism between the front wheel shimmy and the vehicle lateral handling motions is established to investigate the interacting effect between the steering shimmy instability and the general motion instability, that focuses especially on the influence of the tyre force saturation induced by lateral-longitudinal coupling when different degrees and allocation strategy of braking force are applied. The typical 3-degree-of-freedom front wheel shimmy structure of dependent suspension is dynamically modelled by using the Lagrange method, alongside the equations for plane vehicle handling motions introduced. The stretched-string-based tyre kinematic equations, that describe the transient tyre-road contact status, are proposed by analytically deriving the coupling relations between the angular shimmy variables and vehicle motion status. A theoretically approximated linear tyre model, based on the coupling between vertical, longitudinal, and lateral directional forces, is analytically derived for stability analysis. Meanwhile, a complete PAC-2002 tyre model, with experimentally identified parameters, is employed for simulation verification. The stability chart of linear stability analysis shows the variation of the system bifurcation curves and stable parameter region under different parametric configurations, which gives that the degrees and allocations of braking force largely affect the stable parameter domain and the global stability. The variations of the system characteristic roots indicate that both Hopf and S-N bifurcation could happen due to shimmy oscillations and destabilization of motion, respectively, and their co-existence at certain parameter domains make the dynamic behaviour further unpredictable and complex. Numerical simulation verifies the dynamical characteristics of shimmy, and further analysis shows that three types of vehicle motion instability which coexisted with shimmy instability could be triggered by the coupling effect. In addition, the variation law of limit-cycle amplitude under varying vehicle driving inputs is summarized, and finally, a preliminary experiment is conducted for validations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Passive suspensions cannot sufficiently reduce vehicle vibrations on tracks with poor irregularities or when the vehicle was operated at higher speeds. This study proposes three semi-active control algorithms for a secondary lateral damper to enable the vehicle to be operated on high-speed dedicated railways at 350 km/h and conventional low-speed railways at 160 km/h. A high-speed rail vehicle dynamics model with controllable dampers is built to study the feasibility of those algorithms through numerical investigations. Then, both field tests on track and lab tests on a full-scale roller rig were performed to examine the functionality of the controller hardware system and the valve-driven semi-active damper. Furtherly, a time-delay compensation based on the signal amplitude is developed and verified. Results from the on-track and roller rig tests state that the proposed semi-active control algorithms and the designed control system can effectively improve the ride quality of the vehicle when it is put into operation in different track conditions and at various speeds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates an improved adaptive sliding mode fault-tolerant control strategy for a magnetorheological semi-active suspension system with parametric uncertainties and actuator faults. Using the experimental data collected by a quarter-vehicle test rig, an adaptive-network-based fuzzy inference system is employed to establish a learning-based magnetorheological damper model firstly. The Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy approach is introduced to deal with the uncertainties of sprung mass and pitch rotary inertia and then the corresponding Takagi-Sugeno faulty semi-active suspension system is constructed. An adaptive sliding mode fault-tolerant controller is proposed, in which the magnetorheological damper fault gain is observed by the designed estimation law, and the asymptotical stability of the system is further analyzed. Finally, numerical simulation tests are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the designed control scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates an enhanced optimal robust time-delay stabilizer for an autonomous underwater vehicle in the descriptor model. Time-delay, model uncertainty, and actuator saturation constraint are some practical challenges in autonomous underwater vehicle controller design. In this regard, an appropriate autonomous underwater vehicle descriptor model is obtained, and sufficient stabilization conditions are determined in the terms of linear matrix inequality. The obtained criterion guarantees the system to be regular, impulse-free, and stable. Meanwhile, the delay-dependent and rate-dependent conditions are taken into account. Furthermore, uncertainty and time-delay are time-variant. This method includes a tuning factor for practical design aspects and tradeoff among desired requirements. Also, as an essential general requirement in non-linear systems, the maximal estimate of the attraction domain is proposed as an optimization problem. Numerical examples and simulations illustrate that the proposed methods are effective and useful in less conservative results. The technique can be generalized and applied to the most conventional autonomous underwater vehicles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aimed at the safety and stability problems of intelligent vehicles under extreme conditions such as low adhesion road surface and emergency lane change and obstacle avoidance, this article designs a lane change and obstacle avoidance controller based on road adhesion coefficient. Using the nonlinear vehicle dynamics model as the prediction model, using the recursive least squares method to identify the road adhesion coefficient, considering the road adhesion coefficient to plan and adjust in the obstacle avoidance path as well as limit constraint conditions of the model predictive control controller, using model predictive control method for the expectation of intelligent vehicle trajectory tracking, travels tremendously guarantee the security and stability of driving. The joint CarSim–Simulink simulations results show that under poor road conditions, the trajectory tracking accuracy after optimization is higher and the vehicle is less prone to sideslip and instability. The lane change controller designed in this article has strong adaptability to different road surface adhesion coefficient, and all parameters can be controlled within a reasonable safety range at different speeds, with good robustness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study proposes an improved dynamic substructuring model using the estimated frequency response function information at coupling points between substructures. An assembled system generally consists of two or more substructures connected by a bolt. Individual substructure evaluation excluding the effects of other components is important in the development stage of a general mechanical system because the vibro-acoustic performance of the system depends on the specific combination of substructures. Therefore, this study predicted the final coupling system performance using information from the initial evaluation of the individual substructures. Accurate measurements of the joint properties are required to accurately estimate the dynamic assembled system characteristics; however, physical constraints typically limit such measurements at actual coupling points. Accordingly, a method that utilizes generalized coupling properties to estimate the dynamic characteristics of a new coupling system based on the characteristics of an original substructure is proposed. Virtual point transformation is then used to estimate accurate frequency response functions at the coupling points of the assembled system based on convenient measurements. The proposed method was validated using a vehicle suspension that was hard mounted in a test jig and onto an actual vehicle body to estimate the vibration characteristics of the assembled system. The findings of this study contribute to the accurate estimation of the dynamic properties of many real-world bolt-assembled systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The coupling, nonlinearity, and uncertainty characteristics of vehicle dynamics make the accurate longitudinal and lateral control of an automated and connected vehicle platoon a tough task. Little research has been conducted to fully address the characteristics. By using the ideology of constraint-following control this article proposes an integrated longitudinal and lateral adaptive robust control methodology for a vehicle platoon with a bidirectional communication topology. The platoon control objectives contain the path tracking stability, the platoon internal stability, and the string stability. First, we establish the nonlinear kinematics path tracking model and the coupled vehicle longitudinal and lateral dynamical model that contains time-varying uncertainties. Second, we design a series of nonlinear equality constraints that directly guarantee the control objectives based on the kinematic relations. On this basis, an adaptive robust constraint-following control is proposed. It is shown that the control guarantees the uniform boundedness and the uniform ultimate boundedness of the constraint-following error and the uncertainty estimation error. Finally, simulation results are provided to validate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Riding quality is considered a key element in automotive industry which imposes a challenge on car manufacturers to develop new alternative control strategies for the classical suspension system. To this extent, many efforts have been carried out on developing several active or semi-active suspension systems. In the past few years, the decreasing cost of electromechanical actuators has, however, opened new trends to face this challenge. Active aerodynamic surfaces (spoilers) represent an alternative and effective solution to the issue. Two contradicting criteria of good vehicle suspension performance are typically their ability to provide good road handling and increase passengers comfort. The main disturbance affecting these two criteria is terrain irregularities. Active suspension control systems reduce these undesirable effects by isolating car body motion from vibrations at the wheels. In this article, we are trying to investigate the use of active aerodynamic surfaces to enhance ride comfort in sport vehicles for half car model. The article describes also the model and controller used in the study and discusses the vehicle response results obtained from a typical road sinusoidal signal input. The effect of active aerodynamic surfaces could enhance the ride comfort by (15%) without affecting road holding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The extent of vibrations experienced by a vehicle driving over natural terrain defines its ride quality. Generally, surface irregularities, ranging from single discontinuities to random variations of the elevation profile, act as a major source of excitation that induces vibrations in the vehicle body through the tire–soil interaction and suspension system. Therefore, the ride response of off-road vehicles is tightly connected with the ground properties. The objective of this research is to develop a model-based observer that estimates automatically terrain parameters using available onboard sensors. Two acceleration signals, one coming from the vehicle body and one from the wheel suspension, are fed into a dynamic vehicle model that takes into account tire/terrain interaction to estimate ground properties. To solve the resulting nonlinear simultaneous state and parameter estimation problem, the cubature Kalman filter is used, which is shown to outperform the standard extended Kalman filter in terms of accuracy and stability. An extensive set of simulation tests is presented to assess the performance of the proposed estimator under various surface roughness and deformability conditions. Results show the potential of the proposed observer to estimate automatically terrain properties during operations that could be implemented onboard of a general family of intelligent vehicles, ranging from off-road high-speed passenger cars to lightweight and low-speed planetary rovers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to reduce the shock and vibration caused by torque disturbance of the gearbox in vehicles equipped with automatic transmission in the process of in situ shift, a novel semi-active hydraulic damping strut is introduced in the powertrain mounting system. The dynamic response evaluation indexes of vehicle in situ shift are put forward, and a 13-degree of freedom vehicle dynamic model including the semi-active hydraulic damping strut is established. The optimized dynamic characteristic parameters are acquired according to the principle of sharing force and the 13-degree of freedom vehicle dynamic model. The dynamic response evaluation indexes with and without the semi-active hydraulic damping strut are calculated using the 13-degree of freedom vehicle dynamic model in the process of in situ shift, and the calculation results show that the vibration of a vehicle can be reduced by the introduction of a semi-active hydraulic damping strut. Experiments are carried out to analyze the vibration response of the vehicle with and without a semi-active hydraulic damping strut, and the results show that the shock and vibration of the vehicle are reduced by introducing the semi-active hydraulic damping strut. The theoretical calculation values of active-side acceleration of the engine mount and torque strut are consistent with the experimental values, which show that the 13-degree of freedom vehicle dynamic model is reasonable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined automobile vibrations by using a half vehicle model, and its vertical and angular vibrations were suppressed by means of the nonlinear adaptive control of a magneto-rheological damper. The control method was designed in such a way that it did not need to measure the road input to suppress the vibrations by the use of adaptive road observers. Therefore, disadvantages such as measurement difficulty and cost were also eliminated. Instead of completely experimental test rigs, the hardware-in-the-loop simulation which is a hybrid method was preferred due to it being easier to set up, cheaper, and also it had a close response to the full experimental system. The experimental responses obtained by the proposed adaptive control method with adaptive road observers and the nonlinear adaptive control method in which the road disturbances were measured were compared in the time and frequency domains. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method was shown using some figures, root mean square values, and performance indices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses research conducted by the Army Research Laboratory (ARL) - Vehicle Technology Directorate (VTD) on advanced suspension control. ARL-VTD has conducted research on advanced suspension systems that will reduce the chassis vibration of ground vehicles while maintaining tire contact with the road surface. The purpose of this research is to reduce vibration-induced fatigue to the Warfighter as well as to improve the target aiming precision in-theater. The objective of this paper was to explore the performance effectiveness of various formulations of the generalized predictive control algorithm in a simulation environment. Each version of the control algorithm was applied to an identical model subjected to the same ground disturbance input and compared to a baseline passive suspension system. The control algorithms considered include a generalized predictive controller (GPC) with implicit disturbances, GPC with explicit disturbances, and GPC with preview control. The suspension model used was a two-degree-of-freedom dof quarter-car model with a given set of vehicle parameters. The performance of the control algorithms were compared based on their effectiveness in controlling peak acceleration and overall average acceleration over a range of vehicle speeds. The algorithms demonstrated significant reductions in the chassis acceleration of the quarter-car model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we develop methods for maximizing the throughput of a mobility-on-demand urban transportation system. We consider a finite group of shared vehicles, located at a set of stations. Users arrive at the stations, pickup vehicles, and drive (or are driven) to their destination station where they drop-off the vehicle. When some origins and destinations are more popular than others, the system will inevitably become out of balance: vehicles will build up at some stations, and become depleted at others. We propose a robotic solution to this rebalancing problem that involves empty robotic vehicles autonomously driving between stations. Specifically, we utilize a fluid model for the customers and vehicles in the system. Then, we develop a rebalancing policy that lets every station reach an equilibrium in which there are excess vehicles and no waiting customers and that minimizes the number of robotic vehicles performing rebalancing trips. We show that the optimal rebalancing policy can be found as the solution to a linear program. We use this solution to develop a real-time rebalancing policy which can operate in highly variable environments. Finally, we verify policy performance in a simulated mobility-on-demand environment and in hardware experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taxis is a well-known steering technique used by simple animals to approach a stimulus in the real world. However, no mathematical motion model of taxis can be found in the literature. This article derives the differential ordinary equations describing the motion of a Braitenberg vehicle, a widely used taxis model. A qualitative technique for non-linear dynamical systems analysis is applied to investigate the motion generated by the model. Validation of the analysis is performed through several simulations, and conditions for the stimulus source to be reached are obtained. This work fills the theoretical hole in formal models of Braitenberg vehicles and thereby provides theoretical support for the many previous experimental uses of those vehicles for steering tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results of the numerical investigation of structure-borne vehicle interior noise in a simplified model of vehicle compartment. The aim of the paper is to analyze the effects of different variations of certain geometrical and material parameters of vehicle structure on structural-acoustic frequency response functions. It has been found that geometrical modifications have little influence on the structural natural frequencies. However, they strongly affect the acoustic natural frequencies and normal modes as well as the resulting sound pressure responses. The increase in thickness of the bottom plate suppresses the sound pressure responses very efficiently. However, variations of material characteristics of wind- and back-screen do not have much influence on the interior noise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]