A Reconfigurable Integrated Control for Narrow Tilting Vehicles

This paper proposes a reconfigurable control strategy for vehicles with tilting capabilities including a new rollover control approach. It can be applied to the emerging narrow tilting cars for urban transportation as well as conventional vehicles with semiactive or active suspensions. This paper extends the integrated lateral stability controller by considering the roll degrees of freedom for motion control. An envelope approach based on rollover index is proposed for the high-level controller of the vehicle to manage the rollover stability and the control energy consumption. The desired stabilizing forces are then distributed to available actuators using a reconfigurable optimal control allocation. The reconfigurable approach provides the freedom to select different actuators for the system without redesigning the controller. The optimal control allocation also ensures the feasibility as well as system robustness. It is shown via the simulation in CarSim that, by adopting the proposed control approach, tilting control effort is reduced and the vehicle handling, as well as stability in both lateral and roll motions, can be furthered improved.