Use of Integrated Control to Enhance the Safety of Vehicles in Run-Off-Road Scenarios

In this work, an integrated vehicle control system (IC) is tested in run-off-road scenarios. The integrated approach was employed in order to coordinate vehicle control systems, i.e. the Anti-Lock Brake System (ABS), Four-wheel Steering (4WS) and the Electronic Stability Program (ESP). To perform a run-off-road maneuver, a fuzzy virtual test driver was designed. By receiving the lateral position of an obstacle and the vehicle’s relative yaw angle, the virtual test driver is capable of following a reference trajectory. Furthermore, to test the performance of the standalone controllers, i.e. ABS, ESP and 4WS, individual maneuvers are performed using a multibody vehicle model. The vehicle without any coordination between the control systems is used as reference. For the simulation results, it is concluded that the IC improves the vehicle stability and maneuverability in comparison with the non-integrated approach.