Motion management in automotive vehicles

Motion management is concerned with ensuring that a vehicle is capable of tracking, in a safe and stable manner, any (reasonable) speed and direction profile demanded by the driver. Recent work on coordinated control systems for automotive vehicles has concentrated on the computer science aspects of integrated control, such as in-vehicle data management. There is an equal need for work aimed at identifying and understanding the complex dynamic interactions between the vehicle subsystems, in order to guide the development of future vehicle motion controllers. The authors discuss work being carried out at the University of Warwick which is aimed at investigating nonlinear control problems associated with the combined control of vehicle ride, handling and performance, and which have previously been treated separately for control studies. The authors discuss the simulation and modelling of vehicle chassis systems and in particular the suspension system