Holistic vehicle control

Equinox stability control (vehicle dynamics) testing

In active vehicle control and estimation, the Mechatronic Vehicle Systems Laboratory is the largest group in Canada, and is also one of the most active and comprehensive groups globally. The group's main goal is to make vehicle controllers as effective and universal as possible. Doing so would reduce development and tuning times for new vehicles. This would have a major impact in the automotive industry as currently companies spend a huge amount of time and money to develop controllers for new vehicles.

Our main objectives in active vehicle and control and estimation projects are:

• A universal controller to be used in any vehicle (electric, hybrid, and gas)
• Compatible with any actuator configuration - differential braking, torque vectoring, front/rear active steering, and suspension control
• Actuator and sensor fault tolerant
• Robust to road conditions, tire inflation and vehicle mass variations
• Modular estimation algorithms
• Modular structure to be used in autonomous vehicles

Universal vehicle control through different actuation configurations

Using our instrumented test vehicles, the Mechatronic Vehicle Systems Laboratory performs full vehicle testing in our test track and also in our industry partners' proving grounds.

Configurations of the Equinox test vehicles

Various instruments on the Cadillac STS test vehicle

Estimation of vehicle states and parameters are essential in any advanced vehicle control system. One of our main goals in the Mechatronic Vehicle Systems Laboratory is to estimate the vehicle states and parameters using stock sensors of production vehicles. Our estimation algorithms are used to estimate vehicle longitudinal and lateral velocities and tire forces in addition to vehicle mass and road condition.

Estimation test results