Autonomous Riding and Assistance Lateral Control Systems for Motorcycles and Tilting Vehicles
Autonomous driving systems and ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) for four-wheeled vehicles (non-tilting, e.g. cars) are nowadays strongly rising and being extensively studied, both for road and on-track use, to guarantee a progressively safer mobility and improved vehicle performance. However, both because of their greater complexity and their lower market share, results are much less developed for motorcycles and tilting vehicles in general, which nonetheless present even greater safety concerns and difficulty in achieving optimal vehicle performance due to their instability and complex dynamics. ; The direct application to tilting vehicles of the results obtained for non-tilting ones is not practically possible because of the particular challenges posed by the first ones. Reduced space for sensors, actuators and computational hardware requires a careful definition of the vehicle setup, while rider balance and complex and unstable lateral dynamics demand the description of a more sophisticated system, where not all the assumptions made for cars are allowed. ; This research sets out to deepen this unexplored area of study with the objective of developing and experimentally validate an autonomous riding control system for motorcycles and use the developed knowledge to derive Advanced Rider Assistance Systems (ARAS) specifically designed for tilting vehicles. Due to its instability, constituting the main difference in dynamics compared with cars, particular focus will be paid to lateral dynamics and the development of lateral control systems. These ARAS would guarantee improved safety for human ridden vehicles, both for road and on-track use, while the latter use-case would also benefit from ARAS specifically designed to help the rider improve vehicle performance. Moreover, several mobility applications require light and narrow-track autonomous vehicles and could find solutions in the use of tilting ones. ;
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