Attitude motion control of vehicle including the active passenger seat system

Abstract

This research focuses on improving the attitude motion of a vehicle using active suspension and active seat together. The proposed attitude-tracking controller eliminates the unpleasant lateral and longitudinal forces acting on passengers by tilting the vehicle against the direction of the centrifugal forces created in cornering, braking, and accelerating. In addition to the enhancement of ride comfort, better road holding capability is also achieved by evenly distributing forces on all wheels. An active seat system is added to the car body in order to accommodate angles larger than the available body angle. A nonlinear model is utilised to simulate the performance that more resembles the actual system, and the difference between linear and nonlinear models is analysed by comparing the simulation. The simulation results show that using an active passenger seat with the attitude-tracking controller can improve ride comfort more than using attitude-tracking controller alone.