An intelligent tyre based adaptive vehicle stability controller

Active safety systems have become an essential part of today’s vehicles. Although they have advanced in many aspects, there are still many areas where that they can be improved. Being able to obtain information about tyre-road conditions (e.g., slip ratio, tyre-slip angle, tyre forces, tyre-road friction) would be especially significant due to the key role tyres play in providing directional stability and control. Current systems are capable of obtaining such information by means of indirect methods (i.e., vehicle kinematic relations); however, they tend to fail in severe manoeuvres mainly because of the highly nonlinear characteristics of tyres. As a result, other methods are sought to directly obtain information about tyre–road interaction. This paper examines such a method where a tyre-attached sensor unit (intelligent tyre system) provides tyre slip information and the potential performance improvements offered by integrating this system with an adaptive vehicle stability controller.