"Improving Safety, Comfort and Efficiency of Convoy Vehicles Through Novel Preview Control"

通过使用预览控制主动悬架，车队车辆的乘坐质量、主动安全性和能源效率将得到改善。主动悬架车辆（即悬架系统中有力致动器的车辆）的乘坐质量和抓地力都可以通过感知车辆前方的道路并在预览控制器中使用这些信息来改善。本文提出利用前车的整体响应来代替安装在车辆前保险杠上的易受攻击的前瞻传感器，作为为跟随者生成预览控制器信息的手段。在我们提出的研究中，控制器将被设计和模拟以评估性能、稳定性和鲁棒性。物理实现将使用缩小规模的车辆硬件完成。主动悬架还减少了垂直悬架运动所损失的纵向能量，从而潜在地降低了车辆的能耗。采用预视主动悬架和智能巡航控制的车辆的减少量将通过仿真进行量化。lead-vehicle-as-sensor的使用将应用于偏航和侧滚动力学，以提高转弯时的操控性和驾驶质量。对研究界的贡献包括新的控制方案，难以测量的车辆状态的鲁棒估计器，以及对车辆系统元素之间能量相互作用的见解。

Ride quality, active safety and energy efficiency of convoy vehicles will be improved through the use of preview-controlled active suspensions. Both ride quality and roadholding of actively-suspended vehicles (i.e., with a force actuator in the suspension system) can be improved by sensing the road ahead of the vehicle and using this information in a preview controller. Instead of vulnerable look-ahead sensors mounted on the front bumper of the vehicle, the overall response of the preceding vehicle(s) is proposed as a means to generate preview controller information for followers. In our proposed research controllers will be designed and simulated to assess performance, stability and robustness. Physical implementation will be done using reduced-scale vehicle hardware. Active suspensions also reduce the longitudinal energy lost to vertical suspension motion, thereby potentially reducing vehicle energy consumption. The reduction for vehicles with preview-active suspension and intelligent cruise control will be quantified through simulation. The use of lead-vehicle-as-sensor will then be applied to yaw and roll dynamics to improve handling and ride quality during cornering. Contributions to the research community include novel control schemes, robust estimators of difficult-to-measure vehicle states, and insight into energy interactions among vehicle system elements.