Vibration reduction of seat suspension using observer based terminal sliding mode control with acceleration data fusion

In this work, a disturbance observer and state observer based terminal sliding mode (TSM) controller with acceleration data fusion is proposed for the active control of a seat suspension. In practical applications, the driver's body and the friction forces are difficult to be accurately described with a mathematical model; for this reason, the proposed controller is designed based on a model simplified from a 6-degree-of-freedom (6-DOF) seat-driver model with nonlinear friction. The disturbance observer and state observer are designed together with Linear Matrix Inequality (LMI) method. For improving the observer's performance, a complementary filter is applied to fuse the estimation of the seat suspension velocity from the acceleration measurement and the state observer. The proposed controller is validated using simulations with various bump excitations applied, and the conventional state feedback TSM controller is implemented for comparison. The proposed controller is also implemented in a practical active seat suspension prototype, and a well-tuned commercial heavy duty vehicle seat suspension is applied for comparison. The power spectral density (PSD) value and ISO 2631–1 standard are used to evaluate the active seat suspension system's performance under random vibration. Both the simulation and the experimental results indicate that with the proposed controller, the vibration magnitude caused by a rough road can be greatly reduced, and the driver ride comfort is greatly improved.     

Hierarchical Longitudinal Controller for Rear-End Collision Avoidance

Rear-end collision is a very serious problem in modern traffic situations, and there have been a great number of research reports on the longitudinal control method for road vehicles. In many cases, however, the control problem is formulated under platoon configuration and for some predictable noncollision situations. For predictable collision situations, regional and hierarchical approaches have been employed, but these approaches render difficulties due to ignorance for modeling error and logical error in a decision process. In this paper, the vehicle control for collision avoidance is studied with two control objectives, i.e., minimization of the safety distance error and regulation of the relative velocity between two vehicles. For this, a longitudinal controller using terminal sliding mode (TSM) with hierarchical structure is proposed for rear-end collision avoidance. The TSM is employed to achieve convergence in finite time, while the hierarchical approach is used for the system to accommodate the intelligence of the driver to handle various situations. The effectiveness of the proposed control scheme is verified by software simulations     

A new strategy for traction control in turning via engine modeling

The driving stability is affected by driven wheel slip, which can be controlled by the driven wheel torque. In a vehicle powered by an internal combustion engine, the torque can be controlled by an engine management system. The sliding mode algorithm is the mechanism behind the design of the traction control system (TCS). The longitudinal slip is controlled by the position of the throttle valve. The vehicle model used has seven degrees of freedom and a two-state engine model, i.e., the mass of air in the intake manifold and the engine speed. Time-delay transport is considered in the engine model used. A nonlinear tire model for combined slip is used for tire force computation. Due to the nonlinear dynamic of the tire, vehicle, and engine, the control method of sliding mode is used for its robustness. A controller is designed based on the dynamic surface control, for which two first-order surfaces are defined. The effectiveness of the controller is demonstrated with simulation results for different maneuvers. Results show that for different road conditions, the acceleration performance, directional stability, and steerability of a vehicle equipped with TCS is improved. The reason is that the slip is controlled by keeping it in a desired range     

Finite-time control of DC–DC buck converters via integral terminal sliding modes

This article presents novel terminal sliding modes for finite-time output tracking control of DC–DC buck converters. Instead of using traditional singular terminal sliding mode, two integral terminal sliding modes are introduced for robust output voltage tracking of uncertain buck converters. Different from traditional sliding mode control (SMC), the proposed controller assures finite convergence time for the tracking error and integral tracking error. Furthermore, the singular problem in traditional terminal SMC is removed from this article. When considering worse modelling, adaptive integral terminal SMC is derived to guarantee finite-time convergence under more relaxed stability conditions. In addition, several experiments show better start-up performance and robustness.     

Adaptive sliding controller with self-tuning fuzzy compensation for vehicle suspension control

Since the hydraulic actuating suspension system has nonlinear and time-varying behavior, it is difficult to establish an accurate dynamic model for a model-based sliding mode control design. Here, a novel model-free adaptive sliding controller is proposed to suppress the position oscillation of the sprung mass in response to road surface variation. This control strategy employs the functional approximation technique to establish the unknown function for releasing the model-based requirement. In addition, a fuzzy scheme with online learning ability is introduced to compensate the functional approximation error for improving the control performance and reducing the implementation difficulty. The important advantages of this approach are to achieve the sliding mode controller design without the system dynamic model requirement and release the trial-and-error work of selecting approximation function. The update laws for the coefficients of the Fourier series functions and the fuzzy tuning parameters are derived from a Lyapunov function to guarantee the control system stability. The experimental results show that the proposed control scheme effectively suppresses the oscillation amplitude of the vehicle sprung mass corresponding to the road surface variation and external uncertainties, and the control performance is better than that of a traditional model-based sliding mode controller.     

高超声速飞行器递阶滑模控制研究

针对高超声速飞行器轨迹高度和速度跟踪控制问题,基于纵向动力学的输入/输出线性化模型,设计了递阶滑模控制器和非线性扰动观测器,用于解决系统存在不确定性问题和执行机构带有死区非线性问题,对于所设计的控制器和观测器进行了稳定性分析,并且通过仿真验证了本文提出的方法能够提高系统的收敛速度和收敛精度并能克服执行机构死区的影响。     

Automated vehicle guidance using discrete reference markers

Techniques for providing steering control for an automated vehicle using discrete reference markers fixed to the road surface are investigated analytically. Either optical or magnetic approaches can be used for the sensor, which generates a measurement of the lateral offset of the vehicle path at each marker to form the basic data for steering control. Possible mechanizations of sensor and controller are outlined. Techniques for handling certain anomalous conditions, such as a missing marker, or loss of acquisition, and special maneuvers, such as u-turns and switching, are briefly discussed. A general analysis of the vehicle dynamics and the discrete control system is presented using the state variable formulation. Noise in both the sensor measurement and in the steering servo are accounted for. An optimal controller is simulated on a general purpose computer, and the resulting plots of vehicle path are presented. Parameters representing a small multipassenger tram were selected, and the simulation runs show response to an erroneous sensor measurement and acquisition following large initial path errors.     

Enhanced fuzzy sliding mode controller for active suspension systems

We proposed a fuzzy sliding mode controller (FSMC) to control an active suspension system and evaluated its control performance. The FSMC employed the error of the sprung mass position and the error change to establish a sliding surface, and then introduced the sliding surface and the change of the sliding surface as input variables of a traditional fuzzy controller (TFC) in controlling the suspension system. However, no substantial improvement in the ride comfort could be obtained with the FSMC relative to the TFC because the dynamic effect of the sprung mass acceleration from the bouncing tire during tire rotation was not eliminated. We have developed an enhanced fuzzy sliding mode controller (EFSMC) that maintained not only the original FSMC property but also introduced an assisted FSMC to address and compensate for this problem, and to enhance the road-holding capability of the vehicle. The assisted FSMC differs from the original FSMC only in using the sprung mass acceleration instead of the sprung mass position as a variable of the controller design. The EFSMC exhibits better control performance than either the TFC or the FSMC, in suppressing the acceleration of the vehicle body to improve the ride quality, and in reducing the tire deflection to increase the road-holding ability of a car, as confirmed by experimental results.     

Lateral stabilization of a four wheel independent drive electric vehicle on slippery roads

In this paper, a new controller is proposed for lateral stabilization of four wheel independent drive electric vehicles without mechanical differential. The proposed controller has three levels including high, medium and low control levels. Desired vehicle dynamics such as reference longitudinal speed and reference yaw rate are determined by higher level of controller. Moreover, using a neural network observer and a fuzzy logic controller, a novel reference longitudinal speed generator system is presented. This system guarantees the vehicle’s stable motion on the slippery roads. In this paper, a new sliding mode controller is proposed and its stability is proved by Lyapunov stability theorem. This sliding mode control structure is faster, more accurate, more robust, and with smaller chattering than classic sliding mode controller. Based on the proposed sliding mode controller, the medium control level is designed to determine the desired traction force and yaw moment. Therefore, suitable wheel forces are calculated. Finally, the effectiveness of the introduced controller is investigated through conducted simulations in CARSIM and MATLAB software environments.     

新型终端滑模在光电稳定平台中的应用

为了提高光电伺服稳定平台的跟踪精度,针对系统中干扰的影响提出一种新型终端滑模控制算法。首先,提出一种新型终端滑模干扰观测器的设计方法,实现对系统中干扰的快速估计和实时补偿。其次,设计新型终端滑模控制器来提高系统的跟踪精度,结合有限时间收敛和自适应控制的思想,对切换增益进行在线调整,有效地抑制了滑模控制中的抖振问题,使系统状态能够在有限时间内快速地收敛到所设计的滑模面上,并对未估计干扰进行精细化补偿。最后利用Lyapunov理论证明控制系统的稳定性。实验结果表明:该控制策略保证了光电跟踪系统视轴对运动目标的跟踪精度,在0.05 Hz时误差小于0.002,在2 Hz时误差小于0.034,增强了系统的鲁棒性。     

A driving behavior detection system based on a smartphone's built‐in sensor

Traffic accidents resulting from driving behavior and road conditions are crucial problems for drivers. The causes and responses to traffic accidents have been widely studied by researchers. Whereas several approaches have been proposed to ease these problems, most works entail high computational costs or rigid hardware conditions. To address these challenges, we propose Health Driving , a smartphone‐based system for detecting driving events and road conditions solely with a built‐in smartphone acceleration sensor. More specifically, we first collect acceleration data from the acceleration sensor of a smartphone on a vehicle, and then utilize an acceleration reorientation calibration algorithm to convert the obtained acceleration data from the smartphone to acceleration data of the vehicle. Finally, we exploit Health Driving to detect driving events and road conditions, and evaluate the seriousness of the road conditions and driving events by using an efficient scoring mechanism based on the ISO 2631 standard. An extensive evaluation demonstrates that Health Driving operates successfully with an ordinary smartphone, and operates with a low computational cost compared with other methods. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Design of an Optimal Fuzzy Controller for Antilock Braking Systems

Antilock braking systems (ABSs) have been developed to improve vehicle control during sudden braking, especially on slippery road surfaces. The objective of such control is to increase wheel traction force in the desired direction while maintaining adequate vehicle stability and steerability and reducing the vehicle stopping distance. In this paper, an optimized fuzzy controller is proposed for ABSs. The objective function is defined to maintain the wheel slip to a desired level so that maximum wheel traction force and maximum vehicle deceleration are obtained. All the components of a fuzzy system are optimized using genetic algorithms. The error-based global optimization approach is used for fast convergence near the optimum point. Simulation results show fast convergence and good performance of the controller for different road conditions     

Investigation of Sliding-Surface Design on the Performance of Sliding Mode Controller in Antilock Braking Systems

Sliding mode control (SMC) has widely been employed in the development of a wheel-slip controller because of its effectiveness in applications for nonlinear systems as well as its performance robustness on parametric and modeling uncertainties. The design of a sliding surface strongly influences the overall behavior of the SMC system due to the discontinuous switching of control force in the vicinity of a sliding surface that produces chattering. This paper investigates the effects of sliding-surface design on the performance of an SMC-based antilock braking system (ABS), including a brake-torque limitation, an actuator time delay, and a tire-force buildup. Different sliding-surface designs commonly used in ABS were compared, and an alternative sliding-surface design that improves convergence speed and oscillation damping around the target slip has been proposed. An 8-degree-of-freedom (dof) nonlinear vehicle model was developed for this paper, and the effects of brake-system parameter variations, such as a brake actuator time constant, target slip ratios, an abrupt road friction change, and road friction noises, were also assessed.     

Optimal robust control of a contactless brake system using an eddy current

As vehicle speed increases, a more powerful brake system is required to ensure vehicle safety and its reliability. A contactless eddy current brake (ECB) is developed to take the superior advantages of fast anti-lock braking to the conventional hydraulic brake systems. Braking torque analysis is performed by using an approximate theoretical model and the model is modified through experiments to have a more reliable result. Designs of an ECB for a scaled model for demonstration and actual vehicle model are performed. Optimal torque control which minimizes a braking distance is achieved by maintaining a desired slip ratio corresponding to the road condition. Optimal controller which is robust to the varying road friction coefficients is designed by using a sliding mode controller. Simulation and experimental results for a scaled model are presented to investigate the performance of a contactless ECB.     

A fuzzy logic sliding mode controlled electronic differential for a direct wheel drive EV

In this study, a direct wheel drive electric vehicle based on an electronic differential system with a fuzzy logic sliding mode controller (FLSMC) is studied. The conventional sliding surface is modified using a fuzzy rule base to obtain fuzzy dynamic sliding surfaces by changing its slopes using the global error and its derivative in a fuzzy logic inference system. The controller is compared with proportional–integral–derivative (PID) and sliding mode controllers (SMCs), which are usually preferred to be used in industry. The proposed controller provides robustness and flexibility to direct wheel drive electric vehicles. The fuzzy logic sliding mode controller, electronic differential system and the overall electrical vehicle mechanism are modelled and digitally simulated by using the Matlab software. Simulation results show that the system with FLSMC has better efficiency and performance compared to those of PID and SMCs.     

Inversion-free force tracking control of piezoelectric actuators using fast finite-time integral terminal sliding-mode

The major hurdles to control the force created by piezoelectric actuators (PEAs) are originated from its strong nonlinear behaviors which include hysteresis, creep, and vibration dynamics. To achieve an accurate, fast and robust force tracking performance without using complicated modeling and parameter identification of PEAs, this paper presents a practical direct force control scheme. The proposed controller is based on two core approaches: 1) fast finite-time integral terminal sliding mode (FFI-TSM) which allows fast convergence and high accuracy to the closed-loop system without control chattering; and 2) an inverse-model-free compensation, named force-based time-delayed estimation (FBTDE) which offers significant robustness with minimum use of plant dynamics information. The finite-time stability of the overall closed-loop system is proven through the Lyapunov’s method. The proposed force tracking controller is implemented on the PEA system driving a variable physical damping actuator mechanism. The overall accuracy, convergence speed, and robustness of the proposed controller are validated under various experimental scenarios. Comparative experimental results are particularly presented to verify the effectiveness of the FFI-TSM term and the FBTDE term.     

Finite-time tracking controller design for nonholonomic systems with extended chained form

A design scheme of the finite-time tracking controller is given for the nonholonomic systems with extended chained form. The relay switching technique and the terminal sliding mode control scheme with finite-time convergence are used to the design of the controller. The global stability is guaranteed and the system states accurately track the states of the reference model in finite time. The simulation results for two physical models of a knife-edge and a wheeled mobile robot have demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.     

An output-feedback fuzzy approach to guaranteed cost control of vehicle lateral motion

This paper introduces a fuzzy guaranteed cost control approach for automated steering of a highway vehicle. The Takagi–Sugeno (T–S) fuzzy model is utilized to depict the dynamics of nonlinear time-varying lateral system. Based on the fuzzy model, an observer-based fuzzy controller is developed so that without knowing road’s curvature the vehicle can track center of the present lane on a curved highway section. Integrating H_∞ control and optimal control strategies, the fuzzy controller and observer are formulated by solving a minimization problem, which is to minimize a given quadratic performance function. Sufficient conditions to ensure minimum upper bound of the performance function are derived in terms of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). Therefore, the designing work can be efficiently completed by applying the convex optimization techniques. Verified by computer simulation, the proposed method can perform well in driving safety and ride comfort.     

Non-singular terminal sliding mode controller: Application to an actuated exoskeleton

This paper presents a robust controller of an active orthosis used for rehabilitation purposes. The system is composed of the orthosis worn by the shank and has a complex dynamical model. No prior knowledge is considered on the dynamical model and the flexion/extension movements considered are of sinusoidal form and are generally defined by the doctor. The used non-singular terminal sliding mode technique permits to have a finite time convergence. The experimental results have been conducted online on an appropriate dummy and then on three healthy subjects. A comparison of performances obtained by the proposed approach with those obtained by a conventional controller has also been realized. Several situations have been considered to test the robustness and it has been concluded with the effectiveness of the developed controller.     

滑模变结构在AUV航向控制中的应用

针对自主式水下机器人的控制特点,建立了机器人的动力学数学模型。利用运动解耦的方法完成了水下机器人完备控制量的构建。在滑模变结构控制理论的基础上,设计了水下机器人的分布式滑模控制系统,并在Simulink下完成滑模控制器的建模。预先设定了仿真过程中机器人的运动轨迹跟踪,结果表明,滑模控制能有效地控制AUV的航向,对外部扰动具有较强的鲁棒性。