A Novel Rollover Warning Approach for Commercial Vehicles Using Unscented Kalman Filter

Roll responses of the semitrailer and the tractor provide higher lead time and characterise the roll instability of the commercial vehicles subjected to directional manoeuvres at highway speeds. This paper proposes a novel rollover index based on the synthesized roll angles of the tractor and trailer. Owing to the poor measurability, the unscented Kalman filter (UKF) algorithm is used to estimate the roll angle of the track and trailer, respectively. Meanwhile, different weight coefficients are considered in the rollover index to eliminate the influence of mutual coupling between the tractor and the trailer and improve the accuracy of the warning. For the practical implementation of the algorithm, a two-stage rollover warning method triggered by the video and audio is finally proposed to reduce the possibilities of false warnings. Co-simulation is presented to prove the validity of the proposed rollover warning approach.

Vehicle rollover warning system based on TTR method with Inertial Measurement

This paper presents a theoretical and experimental study conducted on the rollover warning of wheeled off-road operating vehicles. The time to rollover (TTR) warning algorithm was studied with real-time vehicle roll angle and roll angle velocity as the input variables, and lateral load transfer ratio (LTR) was used as the rollover determination index. Subsequently, a vehicle dynamics model was built using CarSim software, and a warning algorithm was established in the MATLAB/Simulink environment. The rollover joint simulation in CarSim and MATLAB/Simulink was conducted under typical working conditions. Finally, combined with inertial measurements, a rollover warning system was independently developed. In addition, the rollover warning system was installed on a light forest firefighting truck to verify the feasibility of the system via a real vehicle experiment, and the law of vehicle rollover motion was also studied. The serpentine experiment and steady-state rotation experiment were conducted. The experimental results showed that at identical front-wheel steering angles, the roll angle and lateral acceleration increased with an increase in the vehicle speed. Furthermore, for identical vehicle speeds, the roll angle and lateral acceleration of the vehicle increased with an increase in the front-wheel steering angle. The dangerous vehicle speed was 50 km/h in the serpentine condition and 40 km/h in the steady-state rotation condition. The risk trend and alarm signal obtained by the rollover warning system were consistent with the actual situation. Thus, this can assist drivers in judging the rollover risk and effectively improve the active safety of special vehicles. Furthermore, it also provides a reference for further research on active rollover control technology of special vehicles.