Vehicle seat surface real-time control system with linear actuator to reduce vertical impact

Abstract

For regular vehicles, the vibration generated when a vehicle passes through a groove or step is dampened but still remains and causes whole-body vibration (WBV) to occupants through vehicle seat. Several epidemiological studies have clearly demonstrated that prolonged exposure to vibration from vehicles is detrimental to human health and may cause motion sickness. To reduce this whole-body vibration. We designed a simple and effective feed-forward control system with compact actuator compatible to the limited under-seat dimension and power outlet of compact general passenger cars and successfully authenticated the possibility of vertical vibration reduction by controlling the vehicle seat surface vertical displacement. In this research, we designed a real-time feed-forward control system with transfer function model estimation. This real-time control system contains a commercial DSP device providing coherence input and output with a controllable delay. With the application of transfer function model and state space model, this system successfully estimated the upcoming vibration acceleration according to the input of the vibrational acceleration time-domain data acquired from lower arm when the test vehicle passing a step. Furthermore, it is possible to process the input data and control the linear actuator precisely to reduce the vertical impact observed as setting force reduction.