The Illinois Roadway Simulator: A mechatronic testbed for vehicle dynamicsand control

The Illinois Roadway Simulator (IRS) is a novel, mechatronic, scaled testbe d used to study vehicle dynamics and controls. An overview of this system i s presented, and individual hardware issues are addressed. System modeling results on the vehicles and hardware are introduced, and comparisons of the resulting dynamics are made with full-sized vehicles. To address the reali sm factor of using scaled vehicles, comparisons are made between dynamic re sponses of full-scale and IRS-scale vehicles. The method of dynamic similit ude is a key to gaining confidence in the scaled testbed as an accurate rep resentation of actual vehicles to a first approximation. The IRS is then us ed in a vehicle control case study to demonstrate the potential benefits of scaled investigations. The idea of driver-assisted control is formulated a s a yaw-rate model-following problem based on the representation of the dri ver as a known disturbance model. The controller is designed and implemente d to show that the vehicle's dynamics can be changed to match a prescribed reference model.