Simultaneous Estimation of Steering and Articulation Angle in a Truck-Semitrailer Combination Solely Based on Trailer Signals

摘要

Trailers of commercial vehicle combinations are sparsely equipped with intelligent electronic components compared to trucks. Therefore, in many cases necessary information for the development of intelligent systems for the trailer is not provided. Reasons for that may be missing sensors due to unprofitable costs or because the information is truck related and not passed to the trailer. Online model-based methods can be used to estimate the missing information. In this paper, an Extended Kalman Filter based on a nonlinear single track lateral dynamics model of a truck-semitrailer combination is designed. For the simultaneous estimation of the articulation angle and the truck's steering angle, representing an input to the system, the Extended Kalman Filter is enhanced towards an unknown input estimation approach. The measured signals for the algorithm are solely trailer related yaw rate and longitudinal speed. The method is applied to and validated on a real vehicle.