Intelligent braking - technology, performance and economic challenge

Abstract

Researches indicate that human error is involved in over 90% of accidents. The automotive industry, especially in the area of commercial vehicles, needs new intelligent solutions that contribute to solving the key societal challenges posed by road transport related to the performance, road safety, and cost. "Intelligent" systems can help drivers to avoid accidents. The conventional "add-on" systems, like ABS, ASR, ESC, BAS or EBS support the driver in critical driving/braking situations by influencing the vehicle dynamics in order to avoid accidents or loss in stability or improve its maneuverability. Improvement of the brakes performance through their more precisely controls, under complex variety of operating regimes in dynamic conditions, is imposed as an unavoidable task. According to some initiatives, there is an attempt to move towards a new paradigm, one where vehicles don't crash anymore. It requires using of contemporary sophisticated methods in the field of artificial intelligence. The control of commercial vehicle braking systems performance and braking performance co-ordination between the tractor axels and its trailer, in the case of vehicle combination, is considered as the most important aspect of active safety of these vehicles. A need to improve commercial vehicles braking performance leads to better control of the most relevant disturbing factors and improving of braking forces management. A solution in the area of new technologies, better performance, and reducing the potential economic cost of the vehicle crashing or loss in stability has been proposed in this chapter by introducing of an intelligent control of commercial vehicle braking system performance. It is done using dynamic neural model of the brake performance. The basic precondition in implementation of intelligent braking was provided by introducing of dynamic modeling, prediction and control of the brakes performance during a braking cycle versus driver and/or road conditions demands (wheels slip). Based on that, the brake actuation pressure was intelligently controlled and adapt to the different driver/road/vehicles demands i.e. intelligent wheels slip has been provided. This allows possibilities for controlling of braking systems performance in a more accurate way then it was the case now a day.