JP2009234404A - Cooperation control system for vehicle - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a cooperation control system for a vehicle for preventing an existing control device from being significantly changed, and for enabling a plurality of vehicle control devices cooperatively operate without interference with each other. <P>SOLUTION: A centralized control device which adds a cooperation control signal is installed in an output stage of each vehicle control device, and configured to selectively supply an operation suppression signal to the input stage of the selected vehicle control device, and to easily handle a failure of each control device or the centralized control device. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2010,JPO&INPIT

Description

  The present invention relates to a vehicle cooperative control system including a centralized control device that cooperatively controls a plurality of vehicle control devices.

Various control devices are mounted on the vehicle in order to optimize the handling, handling or handling of the vehicle under various circumstances. As such, a device (hereinafter abbreviated as VSA) that controls the distribution of braking force and / or driving force of left and right wheels and / or front and rear wheels using at least the front wheel steering angle as a control input, and at least the front wheel steering angle as a control input There are devices for controlling the steering angle of the rear wheels (hereinafter abbreviated as RTC). The VSA device described in Patent Document 1 functions to return the disturbance of the behavior of the vehicle to the normal behavior due to the balance of the braking force by automatically applying the left and right or front and rear brakes. This is established by feeding back a deviation with respect to a predetermined vehicle motion. In particular, Patent Document 1 discloses that a steering angle as a driver's will is regulated by a change in a lateral slip angular velocity obtained from a lateral acceleration.
Japanese Patent No. 3214824

In the rear wheel toe angle control device (RTC) proposed in Patent Document 2, in the type conventionally known as four-wheel steering (4WS), the side slip angle of the vehicle is reduced to zero (or in advance). The behavior of the vehicle is stabilized with the target value as a set value. Various methods have been disclosed regarding the method, such as changing the turning angle ratio of the front wheels and rear wheels depending on the speed (low speed is in reverse phase, high speed is in phase), but RTC or 4WS is basically an actual vehicle characteristic with respect to the steering angle. The control is based on feedforward control that minimizes the deviation of the yaw rate response of the model from the yaw rate response of the ideal vehicle characteristic model.
Patent No. 3179271

  The above-mentioned VSA generates a yaw moment with a balance of braking force in principle, so that it can produce an effect even in a region where the tire slip angle exceeds the limit, that is, a vehicle limit region, but frequent braking is unacceptable in practice. Therefore, it is activated in response to an extreme situation (limit behavior) to some extent. On the other hand, the RTC is suitable for control in the normal region (normal behavior) because the yaw moment is generated by using the minute side slip angle of the rear wheel. Therefore, when VSA and RTC are combined, a vehicle behavior stabilization device that is effective in the entire travel region is realized. However, since VSA and RTC are based on the control principle of the feedback system and the feedforward system, respectively, when VSA and RTC are simply started at the same time, mutual interference adversely affects and the control operation becomes unstable. It is possible.

  For this reason, a plurality of functions realized by a plurality of control devices can be realized cooperatively by integrating a plurality of control devices, which may include VSA, RTC, etc., into an integrated system. Can be considered. However, the system design is complicated, and it is necessary to redesign the system program every time the specification is changed, which requires a great amount of man-hours. Further, since the failure of one control device affects the whole, the robustness of the system is reduced. Furthermore, if a failure occurs in a part that centrally manages a plurality of control devices, the entire system may be down.

  In view of such problems of the prior art, the main object of the present invention is to provide a vehicular cooperative control system including a centralized control device that cooperatively controls a plurality of vehicle control devices. It is an object of the present invention to provide a vehicle cooperative control system that can be operated in a coordinated manner without making any changes and without interfering with each other.

  The second object of the present invention is to make it possible to continuously maintain the operation of at least the remaining control devices even if any of the control devices fails in the system as described above. is there.

  A third object of the present invention is to enable the operation of each vehicle control device to be continuously maintained even in the case where the central control device fails in the system as described above.

  According to the present invention, such an invention is a vehicle cooperative control system including a plurality of vehicle control devices and a central control device that cooperatively controls the vehicle control device, wherein the central control device This is achieved by providing a cooperative control system characterized by adding a cooperative control signal to the output stage of the vehicle control device.

  In such a system, normally, the central control device supplies an operation suppression signal to the input stage of the vehicle control device and supplies a cooperative control signal to the output stage of the vehicle control device. The functions of the vehicle control device are concentrated and realized, and when the central control device fails, the functions of the central control device are stopped so that the vehicle control device realizes the respective functions.

  In this way, even when a plurality of existing vehicle control devices are combined without significant changes, the cooperation of the entire system is achieved by adding the cooperative control signal to each output stage. Therefore, even if a different configuration is set for each vehicle type, there is no need to redesign and the manufacturing cost can be reduced. Moreover, even if a failure occurs in any one of the vehicle control devices or a failure occurs in the centralized control device, the influence of the failure on the entire system can be minimized.

  Hereinafter, the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings.

  FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a vehicle cooperative control system that combines a vehicle behavior stabilization control device (VSA) and a rear wheel toe angle control device (RTC). The VSA has a standard yaw rate unit 10 made of an ideal vehicle model, and the standard yaw rate unit 10 outputs a standard yaw rate based on the vehicle speed, the front wheel steering angle, and the lateral acceleration. A deviation between the reference yaw rate and the actual yaw rate actually measured in the vehicle 14 is input to the VSA control unit 11, and the VSA control signal obtained from the VSA control unit 11 is transmitted by the hydraulic pressure control amount conversion unit 12 to the vehicle 14. It is converted into a hydraulic pressure applied to the four-wheel brake cylinder. In this way, the hydraulic pressure applied to the four-wheel brake cylinder is controlled so that the vehicle 14 travels according to the standard yaw rate.

  As described above, since the VSA control uses the brake to control the maneuverability of the vehicle, it involves a loss of output, so that it operates only when the vehicle is in a limit condition. It is desirable to make it. Therefore, the control intervention threshold value unit 13 considers the vehicle speed and the standard yaw rate, designates the limit area by a map, and performs the VSA control only when the vehicle speed and the standard yaw rate are included in such area. Thus, the VSA control unit 11 is operated. FIG. 2 shows a control intervention threshold signal output by the control intervention threshold unit 13 and a VSA control calculation value calculated by the VSA control unit 11. The VSA control calculation value is output from the VSA control unit 11 as the VSA control output value only in the section (time) in which the control intervention threshold signal is low.

  On the other hand, the RTC has a standard yaw rate unit 15 made of an ideal vehicle model, and the standard yaw rate unit 15 outputs a standard yaw rate based on the vehicle speed and the front wheel steering angle. The deviation between the reference yaw rate and the actual yaw rate actually measured in the vehicle 14 is input to the RTC control unit 16, and the RTC control signal obtained from the RTC control unit 16 is a vehicle wheel steering device (not shown). The rear wheels are appropriately steered so that the vehicle 14 travels in accordance with the standard yaw rate. The RTC control is performed constantly without any particular limitation because the rear wheel is steered at a slight angle instead of using the brake and there is substantially no loss of output.

  The illustrated system further includes a cooperative control unit 17 that receives the vehicle speed, the front wheel steering angle, the lateral acceleration, and the actual yaw rate, and sends a cooperative control signal to the output stage of the VSA and the RTC. In the illustrated embodiment, cooperative control signals are added additively to the VSA and RTC outputs, respectively. The cooperative control signal may be appropriately determined as desired. For example, when there is a certain operation amount output from one control device, the operation amount output from the other control device is slightly reduced. Or based on a predetermined transfer function, it may be determined so as to enhance cooperation between the two control devices.

  The cooperative control unit 17 can further supply the VSA operation suppression steering angle and the RTC operation suppression steering angle to the front wheel steering angle input to the VSA standard yaw rate unit 10 and the RTC standard yaw rate unit 15, respectively. These operation suppression steering angles are composed of signals having the same amplitude and opposite signs as the front wheel steering angle input so that the front wheel steering angle input is zero. The operation suppression steering angle signal is added to the input of each vehicle control device (for example, VSA and RTC) when the cooperative control unit is operating normally, and the control signal of each vehicle control device is not output. The controller adds the emphasis justice signal to the output stage of each vehicle control device to directly actuate the actuator of each vehicle control device. Further, when a failure occurs in any of the vehicle control devices (for example, VSA or RTC), the operation suppression steering angle signal is added to the input of the control device, and an erroneous control output is generated from the control device. To avoid.

  Further, when a failure occurs in the cooperative control unit 17 itself, neither the operation suppression signal nor the cooperative control signal is output to the input stage or the output stage of each vehicle control device, and the cooperative control unit 17 is not involved at all. (The state in which the cooperative control unit 17 does not perform cooperative control), and each vehicle control device performs its own or existing control operation. Therefore, even if a failure occurs in the cooperative control unit 17 itself, there may be some restrictions, but the operation can be continued without breaking the behavior of the vehicle.

  Although specific embodiments of the present invention have been described above, the present invention is not limited to the above. For example, although the said Example was about the cooperative control system for vehicles containing VSA and RTC, this invention is applicable also to the cooperative control system for vehicles which uses another control apparatus as a component. Further, the input signal of the control device is not limited to the vehicle speed, the front wheel steering angle, the lateral acceleration, and the actual yaw rate, but may include other input signals. Furthermore, the input signal to be suppressed by the operation suppression signal (dummy signal) is not limited to the front wheel steering angle, but may be other input signals, not limited to one signal, and may be a plurality of signals.

It is a block diagram which shows the whole structure of this invention apparatus. It is a wave form diagram which shows the operating point of the control intervention threshold value part in FIG.

Explanation of symbols

10 VSA standard yaw rate unit 11 VSA control unit 12 Hydraulic pressure control amount conversion unit 13 Control intervention threshold unit 14 Vehicle 15 Standard yaw rate unit 16 RTC control unit

Claims (4)

A vehicle cooperative control system comprising a plurality of vehicle control devices and a centralized control device for cooperatively controlling the vehicle control devices,
The centralized control device adds a cooperative control signal to an output stage of each of the vehicle control devices.   The cooperative control system according to claim 1, wherein the centralized control device selectively supplies an operation suppression signal to an input stage of a selected one of the vehicle control device.   Normally, the central control device concentrates the functions of the vehicle control device by supplying an operation suppression signal to the input stage of the vehicle control device and supplying a cooperative control signal to the output stage of the vehicle control device. 3. The cooperation according to claim 2, wherein the functions of the centralized control device are stopped when the centralized control device fails, and the vehicle control device realizes the respective functions. Control system. A vehicle cooperative control system comprising a plurality of vehicle control devices and a centralized control device for cooperatively controlling the vehicle control devices,
The centralized control device selectively supplies an operation suppression signal to an input stage of a selected one of the vehicle control device.

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