A robust observer designed for vehicle lateral motion estimation

Lateral control of vehicles on automated highways often requires accurate estimation of sideslip angle, yaw rate and lateral velocity, which are difficult to measure directly. Thus, several observers (virtual sensors) were developed in the last decade. In order to solve the unhandled estimation inaccuracy problem caused by system parameter variation and/or model uncertainty, a robust observer has been proposed in this paper. It maintains the good disturbance rejection property that derived form previous research, and simultaneously provides acceptable tolerance to model variance and uncertainty. Specially, effects of displacements of sensory, dynamics variance caused by mass/velocity/friction-coefficients change or nonlinear characteristics are studied. Simulations demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed observer.