Active Roll Control of Heavy Single Unit Vehicles Employing MEMS Angular Rate Sensors

The present paper is concerned with the use of active roll control to improve the roll stability of heavy road-vehicles and the application of Micro-electro-mechanical System (MEMS) angular rate sensors in the feedback monitoring. For this purpose, mathematical models that represent the roll/yaw dynamics for a torsionally rigid Single Unit Vehicle (SUV) is presented. The state-space models that represent the vehicle dynamics are also developed for the purpose of performing numerical simulations. A linear Quadratic Gaussian (LQG) based controller, using Kalman estimator to estimate certain states, is employed to design a full-state active roll control system. A mathematical model that represents the dynamic behavior of a low-cost MEMS gyroscope is derived for the purpose of investigating the suitability of applying this class of angular rate sensor in the roll control of heavy vehicles. Some reliability issues related to MEMS sensors, such as noise and drift, are introduced and included in vehicle dynamic models.