Abstract
This paper presents an integrated linear parameter-varying (LPV) control approach of an autonomous vehicle with an objective to guarantee driving comfort, consisting of cruise and semi-active suspension control. First, the vehicle longitudinal and vertical dynamics (equipped with a semi-active suspension system) are presented and written into LPV state-space representations. The reference speed is calculated online from the estimated road type and the desired comfort level (characterized by the frequency weighted vertical acceleration defined in the ISO 2631 norm) using precomputed polynomial functions. Then, concerning cruise control, an LPV H2 controller using a linear matrix inequality (LMI) based polytopic approach combined with the compensation of the estimated disturbance forces is developed to track the comfort-oriented reference speed. To further enhance passengers’ comfort, a decentralized LPV H2 controller for the semi-active suspension system is proposed, minimizing the effect of the road profile variations. The interaction with cruise control is achieved by the vehicle’s actual speed being a scheduling parameter for suspension control. To assess the strategy’s performance, simulations are conducted using a realistic nonlinear vehicle model validated from experimental data. The simulation results demonstrate the proposed approach’s capability to improve driving comfort.
Highlights
Autonomous vehicles always remain an interesting research topic thanks to their numerous advantages, including collision avoidance and fuel consumption reduction capabilities, satisfying traffic safety and environmental objectives.There has been a considerable amount of research work conducted on either cruise or suspension control of autonomous vehicles
Cruise control refers to the control of the vehicle speed, which is related to longitudinal dynamics, for multiple purposes such as collision avoidance [1,2]
For cases where the variation of a specific parameter(s) significantly affects the system, we model the parameter(s) into an linear parameter-varying (LPV) problem, which is solved as a set of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs)
Summary
Autonomous vehicles always remain an interesting research topic thanks to their numerous advantages, including collision avoidance and fuel consumption reduction capabilities, satisfying traffic safety and environmental objectives. A potential strategy is to relate the speeds at which the vehicle should travel to the desired comfort level and w.r.t specific road profiles. This work proposes a more realistic approach, handling unknown inputs using a robust LPV control approach We analyze both longitudinal and vertical dynamics and their interaction through the road displacement at each of the four wheels. We show how driving comfort is evaluated by measuring the vertical acceleration transmitted to passengers, from which we propose a way to relate the current speed to comfort level using the ISO 2631 standard This allows us to determine which speed the vehicle should travel at in order to guarantee that the acceleration felt by one passenger does not exceed a predefined value.
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