As an example of a geographically distributed test environment, an integrated motion control system for multi-actuated electric vehicles has been proposed and evaluated. This system unifies three active subsystems: drive-by-wire propulsion with independent in-wheel electric motors, electro-hydraulic brake actuators, and active suspension actuators. A distributed X-in-the-loop network architecture supports the approach, integrating a real-time validated vehicle model, dedicated test benches for each subsystem, and a driving simulator located in different geographical locations. This setup enables real-time testing and validation of the integrated control strategy. Validation results show improved ride comfort and safety.

This article introduces a methodology for conducting comparative evaluations of vibration-induced discomfort. The aim is to outline a procedure specifically focused on assessing and comparing the discomfort caused by vibrations. The article emphasizes the metrics that can effectively quantify vibration-induced discomfort and provides insights on utilizing available information to facilitate the assessment of differences observed during the comparisons. The study also addresses the selection of appropriate target scenarios and test environments within the context of the comparative evaluation procedure. A practical case study is presented, highlighting the comparison of wheel corner concepts in the development of new vehicle architectures. Currently, the evaluation criteria and difference thresholds available allow for comparative evaluations within a limited range of vehicle vibration characteristics.

The emergence of new electric vehicle (EV) corner concepts with in-wheel motors offers numerous opportunities to improve handling, comfort, and stability. This study investigates the potential of controlling the vehicle's corner positioning by changing wheel toe and camber angles. A high-fidelity simulation environment was used to evaluate the proposed solution. The effects of the placement of the corresponding actuators and the actuation point on the force required during cornering were investigated. The results demonstrate that the toe angle, compared to the camber angle, offers more effect for improving the vehicle dynamics. The developed direct yaw rate control with four toe actuators improves stability, has a positive effect on comfort, and contributes to the development of new active corner architectures for electric and automated vehicles.

With the automotive industry moving towards automated driving, sensing is increasingly important in enabling technology. The virtual sensors allow data fusion from various vehicle sensors and provide a prediction for measurement that is hard or too expensive to measure in another way or in the case of demand on continuous detection. In this paper, virtual sensing is discussed for the case of vehicle suspension control, where information about the relative velocity of the unsprung mass for each vehicle corner is required. The corresponding goal can be identified as a regression task with multi‐input sequence input. The hypothesis is that the state‐of‐art method of Bidirectional Long–Short Term Memory (BiLSTM) can solve it. In this paper, a virtual sensor has been proposed and developed by training a neural network model. The simulations have been performed using an experimentally validated full vehicle model in IPG Carmaker. Simulations provided the reference data which were used for Neural Network (NN) training. The extensive dataset covering 26 scenarios has been used to obtain training, validation and testing data. The Bayesian Search was used to select the best neural network structure using root mean square error as a metric. The best network is made of 167 BiLSTM, 256 fully connected hidden units and 4 output units. Error histograms and spectral analysis of the predicted signal compared to the reference signal are presented. The results demonstrate the good applicability of neural network‐based virtual sensors to estimate vehicle un-sprung mass relative velocity.

Many studies have been recently exploited to discuss the path following control algorithms for automated vehicles using various control techniques. However, path following algorithm considering the possibility of automated vehicles with rear wheel steering (RWS) is still less investigated. In this study, we implemented nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC) on a passenger vehicle with active RWS for path following. The controller was compared to two other variations of NMPC where the rear steering angle is proportional to the front or fixed to zero. Simulation results suggested that the proposed controller outperforms the other two variations and the baseline controllers (Stanley and LQR) in terms of accuracy and responsiveness.

Since their introduction, anti-lock braking systems (ABS) have mostly relied on heuristic, rule-based control strategies. ABS performance, however, can be significantly improved thanks to many recent technological developments. This work presents an extensive review of the state of the art to verify such a statement and quantify the benefits of a new generation of wheel slip control (WSC) systems. Motivated by the state of the art, as a case study, a nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC) design based on a new load-sensing technology was developed. The proposed ABS was tested on Toyota's high-end vehicle simulator and was benchmarked against currently applied industrial controller. Additionally, a comprehensive set of manoeuvres were deployed to assess the performance and robustness of the proposed NMPC design. The analysis showed substantial reduction of the braking distance and better steerability with the proposed approach. Furthermore, the proposed design showed comparable robustness against external factors to the industrial benchmark.

Recent studies on torque vectoring control for electric vehicles proposed various efficient solutions demonstrating improvement of vehicle stability for evasive manoeuvres. However, the torque vectoring on very low friction surfaces such as black ice or wet snow is rarely investigated, especially for the electric vehicles with off-road capability. The presented study contributes to this topic by laying the groundwork for further advanced torque vectoring designs. Within the framework of this paper, the target vehicle is a sport utility vehicle equipped with four on-board electric motors controlling each wheel separately. The functionality of the developed controllers is tested under hardware-in-the-loop simulations for icy road conditions. For this purpose, the tyre model has been parameterized and validated based on the experimental data conducted on a unique terramechanics test rig at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. The test results confirm very good functionality of the developed controllers and demonstrate an improvement of the electric vehicle driving performance.

The paper presents an overview of continuous wheel slip control (WSC) methods as the part of anti-lock braking system (ABS) for the several vehicles configurations with friction brakes and electric motors. Performance of proposed WSC design variants using several control techniques has been experimentally evaluated for three different test vehicles: Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV) with decoupled electro-hydraulic brake (DEHB) system, SUV with four individual on-board electric motors (OBM), and compact vehicle with four individual in-wheel motors (IWM). Obtained results demonstrated that proposed continuous WSC variants provide a simultaneous effect on braking efficiency and ride quality as well as robust operation in various road conditions. Presented summary provides outlook on future perspectives of the continuous WSC and compares its status with conventional rule-based ABS systems.

X-in-The-loop (XIL) technologies are receiving increased attention in modern automotive development processes. In particular, collaborative experiments, such as XIL tools, have efficient applications in the design of multi-Actuated, electric, and automated vehicles. The presented paper introduces results of such a collaborative study for XIL, which focused on the feasibility of coordinated real-Time simulations for the control of vehicle dynamics systems. The outcomes are based on extensive co-simulation tests performed using remote connections among different geographical locations; the connections were between Germany, on one side, and USA, South Africa, and The Netherlands, from the other side. The performed study allowed formulating requirements for further shared and distributed XIL-experiments for functional validation of automotive control systems.