By virtue of its ease of operation compared with its conventional manual counterpart, automatic transmissions are commonly used as automotive power transmission control system in today’s passenger cars. In accordance with this trend, research efforts on closed-loop automatic transmission controls have been extensively carried out to improve ride quality and fuel economy. State-of-the-art power transmission control algorithms may have limitations in performance because they rely on the steady-state characteristics of the hydraulic actuator rather than fully exploit its dynamic characteristics. Since the ultimate viability of closed-loop power transmission control is dominated by precise pressure control at the level of hydraulic actuator, closed-loop control can potentially attain superior efficacy in case the hydraulic actuator can be easily incorporated into model-based observer/controller design. In this paper, we propose to use a recurrent neural network (RNN) to establish a nonlinear empirical model of a cascade hydraulic actuator in a passenger car automatic transmission, which has potential to be easily incorporated in designing observers and controllers. Experimental analysis is performed to grasp key system characteristics, based on which a nonlinear system identification procedure is carried out. Extensive experimental validation of the established model suggests that it has superb one-step-ahead prediction capability over appropriate frequency range, making it an attractive approach for model-based observer/controller design applications in automotive systems.
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