All-Wheel Torque Vectoring for Driver-in-the-Loop Drifting

Drifting, a specialized form of sideslip control, involves intentionally inducing and maintaining a state of oversteer for lateral sliding of the vehicle. While previous research has primarily focused on autonomous drift control, the integration of the driver in the control loop remains largely unexplored. This thesis aims to explore how a...

Influence of a reconfigurable wheelbase on lateral vehicle dynamics

This thesis describes the concept of a reconfigurable wheelbase for a car as a way to improve agility at higher velocities. Altering the longitudinal position of each wheel with respect to the centre of gravity, leads to a change in lateral wheel forces. This affects the car's yaw rate, therefore making it possible to influence its agility....

Mixed Skyhook-Unsprung Negative Skyhook suspension control for the improvement of Ride Comfort of In-Wheel Motor vehicles

In-Wheel Motor (IWM) vehicle design introduces a lot of benefits for manufacturers. However, it also decreases the ride comfort in the mid-range of perceivable frequencies. The Unsprung Negative Skyhook (UNS) damper control method offers ride comfort improvement in the same frequency range but has its limitations. This thesis proposes two...

Vehicle Dynamics Control Using Control Allocation

Advancement of the state of the art of automotive technologies is a continuous process. It is essential for automotive engineers to combine the knowledge of vehicle dynamics and control theory to develop useful applications that meet requirements of improved safety, comfort and performance. A road vehicle is equipped with several actuators that...

Adaptive Observer for Automated Emergency Maneuvers: Fusing cost-efficient onboard sensors with computer vision into a robust estimate of sideslip angle using online covariance calculation

One of the most promising ideas in autonomous vehicle control systems is letting the vehicle drive autonomously outside the normal, linear, operating region and letting it "drift". By doing so, the maneuverability of the vehicle could be enhanced. To enable systems that can control this behaviour, estimation of certain vehicle states is needed...

Lateral vehicle dynamics control and vehicle state estimation: A tyre force measurement based approach

In assessing and controlling vehicle dynamics, tyre forces are the most important variables as they are the only point of interaction with the road. Estimating tyre forces is difficult because of their nonlinear characteristics. Therefore, most of the lateral vehicle dynamics controllers and estimators in the literature use a tyre model that...