Lateral acceleration potential field function control for rollover safety of multi-wheel military vehicle with in-wheel-motors

This article proposes an automatic longitudinal deceleration based method for multi-wheel vehicle rollover safety in autonomous mode. The information of lateral acceleration and vehicle roll angle is used to generate the longitudinal acceleration at which the vehicle will remain stable to rollover. The lateral and roll dynamics are coupled with longitudinal dynamics using a potential field function for lateral acceleration. This virtual potential field is developed on g-g diagram which represents vehicle portrait of lateral and longitudinal acceleration on abscissa and ordinate respectively. The motion of vehicle is represented by a point moving on this phase portrait of g-g diagram. TruckSim model of multi-wheel military vehicle with in-wheel motors is used with this algorithm which shows that the vehicle is less susceptible to rollover. The safe longitudinal acceleration is achieved by torque control of in-wheel motors fitted in each wheel. Using this method, the vehicle followed the desired trajectory as higher speeds which are safe. This is particularly useful for vehicle autonomous driving with rollover stability.