Abstract
This paper describes a new vehicle dynamics control system based on sideslip angle information to improve active safety. The control system is part of Continental’s Global Chassis Control network and contributes to the ContiGuard® Integrated Safety technologies making cars intelligent and driving safer than ever before.
A central element is the vehicle state observation system, which analyzes the comprehensive information collected from inertial sensors. Due to the high density of information and data present in the system, the software can decide in fractions of a second whether an intervention in vehicle dynamics is in fact warranted. Contradictory information on the vehicle’s status is identified immediately, which leads to correspondingly rapid interventions by control systems, ensuring the maximum level of safety. Our scalable state observation approach can be embedded in any control unit that features a floating point microcontroller that has access to a set of inertial sensor and standard vehicle information.
The control system is a reactive system based on the assumption that the driver is “in-the-loop” and commands the motion of the vehicle properly. The main requirement to the control system is that the operating modes of the several mechatronic subsystems should always be transparent to the driver and supporting him. It is the main task of arbitration and allocation features to avoid conflicts and therefore prevent the driver from being confused about the system behaviour especially at or around the friction limit. An outlook on automatic decision to change the operating mode carried out by predictive safety systems will also be addressed in the paper.
The implemented vehicle dynamics control system has been verified in various vehicle tests. Among them are typical open loop tests like power-off reaction of a vehicle in a turn and closed loop tests like double lane change and emergency steering maneuvers providing an informative basis of the steerability, stability and controllability of the vehicle.
Keywords: Integrated Safety, Active Safety, Networking, Global Chassis Control, Vehicle State Observer, Sideslip Angle Control