The Twin-in-the-loop approach for vehicle dynamics estimation and control
Presenter Simone Formentin, Politecnico di Milano, Italy
Slides
Abstract
In the automation of vehicle dynamics, engineering a suitable filter or controller is a long and costly process. The starting point is usually the design of the digital system of interest, based on a simple model of the vehicle, and its testing on a full-fledged multibody simulator. Then, many driving hours are required during the End-of-Line (EoL) tuning phase to calibrate the system to be used with the real vehicle. In this talk, we will discuss the methodological and practical advances offered in case the full-fledged multibody simulator can be run on-board in the electronic control unit, so as to have an accurate estimate of both vehicle states and nominal controls in real time. Within this framework, we will show that in the EoL phase we only need to design simple compensators of the mismatches between the expected and the measured outputs, whereas no fine tuning of (possibly complex) systems is required. The resulting approach not only exploits the - usually available - simulator and significantly simplifies the design process, but also outperforms the state-of-the-art techniques in terms of tracking accuracy and robustness within challenging vehicle dynamics problems. Several case studies will be discussed to illustrate the potential of the proposed approach as compared to traditional vehicle dynamics estimation and control solutions.