A dynamic stability control for electric narrow tilting three wheeled vehicle using integrated multivariable controller

Abstract

Narrow tilting three wheeled (NTTW) vehicle is an upcoming smart transportation system which is a viable alternative to four and two wheelers for personal mobility. It combines positive aspects of a car and a motorcycle. It outperforms conventional cars on the aspects of consumption of less space in traffic and in parking. However, its realization offers certain challenges in order to make it safe, comfortable and acceptable to the consumers.In this paper, a detailed nonlinear seven degrees of freedom mathematical model for an electric NTTW vehicle has been developed. The NTTW vehicle model captures the chassis dynamics of NTTW vehicle along longitudinal, lateral and tilt motions. The NTTW vehicle is considered to have two driven front wheels housed with in-wheel hub motors and one non-driven rear wheel. The vehicle is assumed to be equipped with a tilting actuator to lean the vehicle body and steer-by-wire mechanism to steer the front wheels. Two integrated controllers each consisting of two separate control schemes, first for lateral-tilt dynamics and the second for longitudinal dynamics are designed. The prime objective is to achieve the desired trajectory of the driver while maintaining vehicle stability. A baseline controller strategy is first designed with PID control technique. Thereafter, a multi variable controller strategy using a state feedback approach is implemented. A comparison is made on their respective performances by means of simulating the vehicle model in various operating conditions. These studies and simulations show improved vehicle handling and stability performances with proposed novel strategy.