Towards a Global Integrated Vehicle Motion Control: Opportunities & Challenges

Most of today’s terrestrial vehicles are over-actuated, combining many advanced functions that control the vehicle dynamics. This over-actuation will increase with the trend of more efficient traction engines and innovative chassis systems. Even though each system or function is developed for a particular objective, different systems may influence the same physical variable and the global vehicle dynamics. Without any global system coordination, the concurrent actions of systems may lead to unwanted interactions that compromise the potential of each system and consequently impact the global vehicle safety. This implies new requirements for the longitudinal, transverse, and vertical dynamics. However, the necessary systems that would be needed for a safe and a comfortable autonomous driving with an affordable cost remain uncertain. Our research aims to provide an extensible and modular control architecture that does not depend on a particular system combination.