Multi-Sensor Fusion Based Estimation of Tire-Road Peak Adhesion Coefficient Considering Model Uncertainty

The tire-road peak adhesion coefficient (TRPAC), which cannot be directly measured by on-board sensors, is essential to road traffic safety. Reliable TRPAC estimation can not only serve the vehicle active safety system, but also benefit the safety of other traffic participants. In this paper, a TRPAC fusion estimation method considering model uncertainty is proposed. Based on virtual sensing theory, an image-based fusion estimator considering the uncertainty of the deep-learning model and the kinematic model is designed to realize the accurate classification of the road surface condition on which the vehicle will travel in the future. Then, a dynamics-image-based fusion estimator considering the uncertainty of visual information is proposed based on gain scheduling theory. The results of simulation and real vehicle experiments show that the proposed fusion estimation method can make full use of multisource sensor information, and has significant advantages in estimation accuracy, convergence speed and estimation robustness compared with other single-source-based estimators.