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

通过使用预控主动悬架，将提高车队车辆的平顺性、主动安全性和能效。通过感知车辆前面的道路并在预览控制器中使用该信息，可以改善主动悬架车辆(即，悬架系统中带有力执行器)的平顺性和道路保持性。不同于安装在车辆前保险杠上的易受攻击的前瞻传感器，前车(S)的总体响应被提出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，控制器将被设计和仿真来评估性能、稳定性和鲁棒性。物理实施将使用缩减规模的车辆硬件完成。主动悬架还可以减少垂直悬架运动所损失的纵向能量，从而潜在地降低车辆的能耗。具有预瞄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。然后，将使用铅车辆作为传感器应用于偏航和侧滚动力学，以改善转弯过程中的操纵和平顺性。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稳健估计器，以及对车辆系统元素之间的能量相互作用的洞察。 这项研究对军方很重要，军方将卡车部署在密集的车队中，那里的地形可能高度可变，司机年轻且缺乏经验。乘坐质量的改善减少了疲劳和受伤，而道路保持能力的改善则提高了机动性和稳定性。燃料节约对于高效的军事部署非常重要。燃油消耗和排放是与重型卡车相关的主要问题，它们的减少将带来广泛的环境和经济效益。改进的车辆对车辆的通信最终可以使领先车辆作为预览信息的交流，以警告追随者道路障碍物，从而不仅使车队受益，也使普通驾驶公众受益。

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. This research is important to the military, which deploys trucks in closely-spaced convoys where the terrain can be highly variable and the drivers young and inexperienced. Ride quality improvements reduce fatigue and injury, while roadholding improvements increase maneuverability and stability. Fuel savings are important for efficient military deployments. Fuel consumption and emissions are major concerns associated with heavy trucks, and widespread environmental and economic benefits will result from their reduction. Improved vehicle-to-vehicle communication could eventually allow communication of lead-vehicle-as-preview information to warn followers of road obstacles, thereby benefiting not only convoy vehicles, but also the general driving public.