The Twin-in-the-Loop approach for vehicle dynamics control

TL;DR

This paper introduces a real-time, on-board simulation-based vehicle control method that simplifies tuning and improves accuracy and robustness in active braking scenarios.

Contribution

It proposes a Twin-in-the-Loop approach that runs the simulator on-board, reducing tuning complexity and enhancing control performance over traditional methods.

Findings

Outperforms state-of-the-art in tracking accuracy

Enhances robustness in active braking control

Simplifies the end-of-line tuning process

Abstract

In vehicle dynamics control, engineering a suitable regulator is a long and costly process. The starting point is usually the design of a nominal controller based on a simple control-oriented model and its testing on a full-fledged simulator. Then, many driving hours are required during the End-of-Line (EoL) tuning phase to calibrate the controller for the physical vehicle. Given the recent technological advances, in this paper we consider the pioneering perspective where the simulator can be run on-board in the electronic control unit, so as to calculate the nominal control action in real-time. In this way, it can be shown that, in the EoL phase, we only need to tune a simple compensator of the mismatch between the expected and the measured outputs. The resulting approach not only exploits the already available simulator and nominal controller and significantly simplifies the design process, but also outperforms the state-of-the-art in terms of tracking accuracy and robustness within a challenging active braking control case study.