78 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 17, NO.

1, JANUARY 2009

Development and Experimental Evaluation of a Slip

Angle Estimator for Vehicle Stability Control
Damrongrit (Neng) Piyabongkarn, Rajesh Rajamani, John A. Grogg, and Jae Y. Lew

AbstractReal-time knowledge of the slip angle in a vehicle is Rear-left longitudinal force.

useful in many active vehicle safety applications, including yaw sta- Rear-right longitudinal force.
bility control, rollover prevention, and lane departure avoidance.
Sensors to measure slip angle, including two-antenna GPS systems Front lateral force.
and optical sensors, are too expensive for ordinary automotive ap- Front-left lateral force.
plications. This paper develops a real-time algorithm for estima-
tion of slip angle using inexpensive sensors normally available for Front-right lateral force.
yaw stability control applications. The algorithm utilizes a com- Rear lateral force.
bination of model-based estimation and kinematics-based estima-
tion. Compared with previously published results on slip angle es- Rear-left lateral force.
timation, this present paper compensates for the presence of road Rear-right lateral force.
bank angle and variations in tire-road characteristics. The devel-
oped algorithm is evaluated through experimental tests on a Volvo Tire normal force.
XC90 sport utility vehicle. Detailed experimental results show that Gravity acceleration.
the developed system can reliably estimate slip angle for a variety
of test maneuvers. Vehicles understeer gradient.
Index TermsBank angle estimation, friction estimation, slip Wheel base.
angle estimation, stability control, vehicle dynamics. Mass of the vehicle.
Yaw rate.
NOMENCLATURE Desired yaw rate.
Longitudinal body-fixes axis of vehicle. Engine torque.
Vehicles longitudinal velocity.
Lateral body-fixed axis of vehicle.
Vehicles lateral velocity.
Global axis in - plane of vehicle.
Orthogonal global axis in - plane of vehicle. Vehicle body slip angle.
Distance from center of gravity (c.g.) to front axle. Desired body slip angle.
Vehicle longitudinal acceleration. Estimated body slip angle using model-based
estimation.
Measured vehicle lateral acceleration. Estimated body slip angle using kinematics-based
Distance from c.g. to rear axle. estimation.
Front tire cornering stiffness. Steering wheel angle.
Rear tire cornering stiffness. Tire velocity vector angle makes with vehicle
longitudinal axis.
Track width. Time constant.
Front tire longitudinal force. Tire-road friction coefficient.
Front-left tire longitudinal force. Weighting factor.
Front-right tire longitudinal force. Road bank angle.
Rear longitudinal force. Velocity vector at the c.g. of the vehicle.
Velocity vector at the front tire of the vehicle.
Manuscript received January 18, 2007; revised November 18, 2007 and Jan-
uary 25, 2008. Manuscript received in final form March 13, 2008. First pub-
lished May 23, 2008; current version published December 24, 2008. Recom-
mended by Associate Editor P. Meckl. I. INTRODUCTION
D. (Neng) Piyabongkarn and J. Y. Lew are with the Innovation Center, Eaton
Corporation, Eden Prairie, MN 55344 USA (e-mail: nengpiyabongkarn@eaton.
com; jaelew@eaton.com).
R. Rajamani is with the Department of Mechanical Engineering, University
of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455 USA (e-mail: rajamani@me.umn.edu).
J. A. Grogg is with the Torque Control Product Division, Eaton Corporation,
V EHICLE stability control systems that prevent vehicles
from spinning, drifting out, and rolling over have been
developed and recently commercialized by several automotive
Marshall, MI 49068 USA (e-mail: johnagrogg@eaton.com). manufacturers [1][3]. Stability control systems that prevent ve-
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TCST.2008.922503 hicles from skidding and spinning out are often referred to as
1063-6536/$25.00 2008 IEEE
PIYABONGKARN et al.: DEVELOPMENT AND EXPERIMENTAL EVALUATION OF A SLIP ANGLE ESTIMATOR FOR VEHICLE STABILITY CONTROL
Fig. 1. Functioning of a yaw stability control system.
yaw stability control systems while control systems that prevent
rollover are referred to as active roll stability control systems.
Fig. 1 schematically shows the function of a yaw stability
control system. In this figure, the lower curve shows the trajec-
tory that the vehicle would follow in response to a steering input
from the driver if the road were dry and had a high tireroad fric-
tion coefficient. If the coefficient of friction were small or if the
vehicle speed were too high, then the vehicle would be unable
to follow the nominal motion required by the driver. It would
instead travel on a trajectory of larger radius as shown in the
upper curve of Fig. 1. The function of the yaw control system
is to restore the yaw velocity of the vehicle as much as possible
to the nominal motion expected by the driver, as shown by the
middle curve in Fig. 1.
Many stability control systems focus on yaw rate feedback
for enhancing stability performance. In such cases, the control
system attempts to ensure that the actual yaw rate of the vehicle
tracks a desired yaw rate determined by the drivers steering
input [1]. However, in situations on low-friction road surfaces,
it is also beneficial to control the vehicle slip angle preventing
it from becoming too large, in addition to controlling yaw rate
[1][3]. Slip angle control is necessary because too high a slip
angle can reduce the ability of the tires to generate lateral forces
and can significantly compromise the performance of the ve-
hicle control system. Hence, both yaw rate and slip angle are
variables needed for vehicle stability control.
This paper focuses on methods of slip angle estimation for
real-time yaw stability control. To begin with, let us review the
formal definition of slip angle. The slip angle of a vehicle is the
angle its velocity vector at the center of gravity (c.g.) makes with
the longitudinal axis of the vehicle. The slip angle of a tire is
the angle of the velocity vector at the tire with the orientation of
the tire [1]. Both of these definitions are illustrated in Fig. 2.
II. REVIEW OF SLIP ANGLE ESTIMATION METHODS
A. One-Antenna and Two-Antenna GPS Systems
One-antenna GPS systems can measure vehicle velocity quite
accurately even without the use of local differential correction
signals. For example, GPS systems such as the Novatel Super-
star are relatively inexpensive and have a cost in the range of
79
Fig. 2. Vehicle and tire slip angles.
about $300. The Novatel Superstar can provide a horizontal po-
sition accuracy of 510 m and a velocity accuracy of 0.05 m/s.
The velocity accuracy obtained is far superior to the position ac-
curacy due to the use of carrier phase signals [4]. By using ve-
locity measurements in the absolute (inertial) earth coordinates,
the orientation of the velocity vector in the horizontal plane of
the vehicle can be obtained as
(1)
where is the orientation of the velocity vector of the vehicle
in absolute coordinates. In order to obtain slip angle, one fur-
ther needs to obtain the absolute orientation angle of the vehicle
itself, since slip angle is the angle between the vehicle longitu-
dinal axis and its velocity vector.
A two-antenna GPS system can be used to obtain absolute
orientation of the vehicle. A two-antenna system provides real-
time position information at two points along the vehicle the
two points being those corresponding to the antenna locations.
While these position values are themselves inaccurate (with ac-
curacy of the order of 510 m), the fact that the relative distance
between these two points is fixed and known can be used to ob-
tain accurate estimates of vehicle orientation [4]. Algorithms
and results on obtaining orientation with inexpensive two-an-
tenna systems for satellites are presented in [4] and could po-
tentially be extended to obtain similar results for automotive
systems.
It should be noted that two-antenna GPS systems are likely
to cost as much as $600 and will be considered expensive for
passenger sedans by automotive manufacturers.
A one-antenna GPS system cannot by itself measure slip
angle, as explained earlier. However, several researchers have
developed systems for slip angle measurement based on the use
of an inertial measurement unit together with a one-antenna
GPS system [5], [6]. In the case of such systems, the inertial
measurement unit provides lateral and longitudinal acceleration
measurements, which can be integrated to obtain lateral and
longitudinal velocities. The ratio of these body-fixed velocities
can then be used to obtain slip angle. The major problem with
this integration approach is that bias errors in the acceleration
measurements will cause serious drift in the velocity estimates.
The bias errors can be estimated in real time using a Kalman
80 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 17, NO. 1, JANUARY 2009
Fig. 3. Vehicle lateral and roll dynamics.
filter that combines the use of inertial sensors with a single-an-
tenna GPS system.
The disadvantage of the GPS-inertial measurement unit ap-
proach is that the inertial sensors often have to be of very high
quality in order to obtain accurate drift-free estimates. High-
quality inertial measurements can be extremely expensive. For
example, the RT3000 system sold by Oxford Technical Solu-
tions costs over $50 000 [7]! To the best of the authors knowl-
edge, there are no inexpensive single-antenna slip angle estima-
tion systems currently being sold on the market.
Another disadvantage of GPS-based systems in general is that
they are unreliable in urban environments where tall buildings
and urban canyons can prevent access to GPS satellite signals.
B. Optical Sensors for Slip Angle Measurement
Noncontact optical sensors for slip angle measurement have
been developed by CorrsysDatron [8] and others. These sen-
sors use optical means to capture planar road texture and eval-
uate the motion of the vehicle by measuring the direction and
magnitude of change with respect to the road texture. Such op-
tical sensors can provide very accurate slip angle measurements.
However, they are very expensive. For example, the sensors by
CorrsysDatron cost over $30 000!
C. Dynamic Model-Based Estimation
A more cost-effective solution compared with optical sensors
and GPS-based systems is to estimate slip angle from typical
on-board sensors already available for use by the vehicle sta-
bility control system. For example, accelerometers that measure
lateral and longitudinal acceleration, a gyroscope that measures
yaw rate and a steering angle sensor are typically used by all sta-
bility control systems. A slip-angle estimation system that relies
only on these sensors would not add any cost to the stability con-
trol system and would therefore be valuable. It should also be
noted that accelerometers in general cost as little as $5$10 a
piece and are extremely viable for automotive applications.
Several researchers have proposed different slip angle estima-
tion methodologies based on use of the above stability control
system sensors. Most methods can be categorized in two groups:
kinematics-based methods [2], [3], [9] and vehicle-model-based
methods [10][15]. The kinematics-based methods (or integra-
tion method) are robust against vehicle parameters, changes in
tire-road conditions, and changes in driving maneuvers. How-
ever, such methods are very sensitive to sensor error especially
sensor bias error, which causes a drift, and sensor error caused
by road bank angle. The model-based methods, on the other
hand, are relatively robust against sensor errors. However, they
depend heavily on the accuracy of the vehicle and tire parame-
ters and knowledge of road conditions. Nishio [13] proposed an
estimation algorithm using a combination of the model-based
method and the kinematics-based method. The algorithm uti-
lizes tire-road friction, road bank angle, and vehicle spinout
judgment and selects between one of the two methods for slip
angle estimation with a switching logic.
D. Proposed New Estimation System
In this paper, a new method to estimate vehicle slip angle
is presented. The method uses a combination of model-based
estimation and kinematics-based estimation. At low frequen-
cies, the signal from the model-based estimation plays an im-
portant role in the estimator. Higher frequency behavior is ob-
tained using the kinematics-based estimation. Estimation of the
tire-road friction coefficient, tire cornering stiffness, and road
bank angle is also addressed in this paper. The developed es-
timation algorithm was validated with experimental measure-
ments on a test vehicle. It was verified that this slip angle esti-
mation provides reliable slip angle and can be potentially used
effectively in vehicle stability controllers.
III. DEVELOPMENT OF NEW SLIP ANGLE ESTIMATION METHOD
A. Model-Based Estimation
Consider the three-degrees-of-freedom (3DOF) model used
to represent the vehicle lateral dynamics as shown in Fig. 3. The
3-DOF are the lateral translation of the vehicle, the yaw motion
of the vehicle, and the roll motion of the vehicle. The effect of
road bank angle is also considered for the estimation algorithm
in this paper. The nonlinear vehicle lateral dynamics with the
effect of longitudinal forces, vehicle roll angle, and road bank
angle can be formulated as
(2)
where is the roll angle and is the bank angle.
PIYABONGKARN et al.: DEVELOPMENT AND EXPERIMENTAL EVALUATION OF A SLIP ANGLE ESTIMATOR FOR VEHICLE STABILITY CONTROL
For purposes of slip angle estimation, the above nonlinear
equations can be simplified further using the following assump-
tions.
1) The lateral tire force is assumed to be proportional to the
slip angle, i.e.,
where and represent the front and rear cornering
stiffness respectively.
This assumption is valid for slip angles smaller than the
slip angle value corresponding to peak lateral force.
2) A small steering angle is assumed such that and
. matics equation is represented as follows,
3) The slip angles at the front and rear tires can be related to
the body slip angle and the yaw rate using the following
linear approximations:
4) The effect of the vehicle roll angle is neglected for this
study.
5) The effect of the vehicle longitudinal forces is neglected
for this study.
With the above linear approximations and small angle assump-
tions, (2) can be written as
(3)
where and . not involve vehicle parameters. However, it has been well docu-
This equation can be further rewritten in terms of inertial lat-
eral acceleration, which can be obtained using an accelerometer.
The accelerometer reading is given by
(4)
Hence, we have or
(5)
From (5), the slip angle can be estimated as
(6)
Equation (6) is a model-based estimate of the slip angle based
on a model with the assumptions described above. This model-
based method is relatively robust against road bank angle and
sensor bias, however, it is a function of the vehicle parameters
in (6). The estimate tends to deviate from the actual values as
a result of mismatch between the vehicle actual parameters and
those used by the model, or disturbances, such as unmodeled
lateral forces and moments due to side wind. Moreover, this es-
timate will be reasonably good only under somewhat restrictive
conditions such as nominal longitudinal tire forces. In order to
minimize these effects, the model can further include feedback
of error signals, that is the differences between the measured sig-
nals and the ones predicted by the model, thus forming a closed
loop observer [11], which will not be described in this paper.
81
It should be noted that the estimation algorithm in (6) does
not involve integration of accelerometer or yaw rate gyroscope
signals. Instead the estimate is an algebraic function of these
measurements. Hence, an unstable drift due to bias errors in
accelerometer or gyroscope signals will not occur in the model-
based estimator.
B. Kinematics-Based Estimation
Another way to estimate the vehicle slip angle is to use the
kinematical relationship of slip angle velocity, yaw rate, lat-
eral acceleration, longitudinal velocity and road bank angle. The
kinematics-based estimation is a direct measurement of the slip
angle, but requires an additional integration operation. The kine-
(7)
where is the lateral acceleration measured with an ac-
celerometer, is the derivative of slip angle, is the longitudinal
speed, and is the bank angle. The effect of longitudinal accel-
eration has been disregarded due to its slow dynamics compared
to lateral dynamics.
Thus, the slip angle can be estimated by integrating the slip
angular velocity term in (7) to yield
(8)
This method is robust against variations in vehicle parame-
ters, tire-road conditions, and driving operations, since (8) does
mented in the literature that the kinematic method of slip angle
estimation is prone to drift due to bias errors in the accelerom-
eters and gyroscopes [2], [3], [9], [10], [12]. The estimated slip
angle will drift over time no matter how small the bias is.
C. Cornering Stiffness Estimation
Fig. 4 shows the relationship between lateral tire force and
slip angle on road surfaces with different tire-road friction co-
efficients. Values of equal to 2, 4, 6, and 8 kN were used.
As seen in the figure, the cornering stiffness varies with friction
coefficient and increases roughly linearly with the value for
low slip angles [16]. This section discusses an algorithm for up-
dating the value of cornering stiffness based on estimated value
of . As seen in Section III-A, the cornering stiffness is an
important parameter in the model-based estimator.
The relationship in Fig. 4 was obtained by using a Magic
Formula tire model for a radial tire 205/60 VR 15 6J [17]. Note
that the Magic Formula tire model involves a complex nonlinear
function of the variable . However, at small slip angles, the
relation is linear, as seen from the curves in Fig. 4.
During the last few years, several researchers have proposed
algorithms for real-time estimation of tireroad friction coef-
ficient [18][21]. Friction coefficient estimation using longitu-
dinal motion measurements have been evaluated by several re-
searchers, including the authors of the present paper [19], [18].
It should be noted that while these results have discussed estima-
tion of friction coefficient , the algorithms actually estimate the
variable . The normalized force in these previous results
82
Fig. 4. Lateral tire force as a function of slip angle at various values of F .
Fig. 5. Cornering stiffness as a function of F .
is typically assumed to be known, based on the measured weight
of the vehicle or calculated based on the measured weight and
the longitudinal vehicle acceleration [19], [21]. In the present
paper, it is only the composite quantity that is required and
it can be estimated directly by algorithms such as the one pre-
sented in [19].
Using estimated values of , the cornering stiffness values
can be updated in real time using the relationship shown in Fig. 5
[17].
It should be noted that, for values of up to 3 kN, cornering
stiffness increases roughly linearly. After reaching a peak value
of 48 kN/rad, cornering stiffness decreases slightly for further
increases in . This decrease has been explained in literature
as an occurrence due to shrinking of the contact patch area that
happens at high inflation pressure and high normal forces [22].
The overall algorithm for cornering stiffness update is as fol-
lows:
1) Measure longitudinal acceleration, longitudinal velocity
and wheel speed. Longitudinal velocity can be measured
using inexpensive GPS [4]. Longitudinal slip ratio can be
calculated using longitudinal speed and wheel speed:
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 17, NO. 1, JANUARY 2009
Fig. 6. Model of normalized longitudinal force versus slip ratio for friction
estimation algorithm.
2) Model normalized longitudinal tire force versus slip ratio,
using a two-region curve as shown in Fig. 6.
3) In region (A), use the following model ,
where is the unknown friction coefficient parameter,
is a known calibration constant that can be obtained from
data and is longitudinal slip ratio.
4) In region (B), use the following model ,
where is the unknown friction coefficient parameter and
is again a known calibration constant that can be ob-
tained from data.
5) Determine whether the operating region is A or B, de-
pending on the measured value of slip ratio. Then use
parameter estimation algorithms based on recursive least
squares to find or , depending on the region of
operation. Hence, find and .
6) Once has been estimated, the value of cornering stiff-
ness can be updated using the curve in Fig. 5 for values of
up to 3 kN.
For detailed experimental results on estimation of , please
see [19]. In the present paper, we assume that estimates of
are already available and update cornering stiffness values based
on these estimates.
D. Combined Model-Kinematics-Based Estimation
The proposed estimation method combines the advantages
from the previous two methods. At low frequencies, the value
from the model-based estimation is mainly used. Robustness
against the sensor bias errors and road bank angle is thus ob-
tained. Accurate dynamic change of slip angle and robustness
against model errors is obtained by using the kinematics-based
estimation at higher frequencies, hence, eliminating the effect
of both bias error and model error. First order filters were found
to be adequate for the combination of the kinematics and model-
based estimates. The combined estimated slip angle is proposed
as
(9)
where is a filter parameter. A value of equal to was
utilized for the filter.
By using the new estimation method, the need to do inte-
gration of the kinematics-based value is eliminated. Instead, a
pseudo integral is used in (9) for the kinematics-based value.
PIYABONGKARN et al.: DEVELOPMENT AND EXPERIMENTAL EVALUATION OF A SLIP ANGLE ESTIMATOR FOR VEHICLE STABILITY CONTROL
Fig. 7. Test vehicle- Volvo XC90 with GPS system.
Moreover, a low-pass filter is also being inherently used in (9)
to reduce the noise from the model-based value. This method
also provides a minimal phase lag due to all signal frequencies
being captured.
It should be noted that, while the model-based estimation uti-
lized several assumptions, including small slip angle and small
steering angle, the combined model-kinematics-based estimator
will work even in the absence of these assumptions being satis-
fied. This is because the kinematics based estimator does not
require these assumptions. The only problem with the kine-
matics-based estimator is the occurrence of drift and this drift
problem is addressed by the model-based estimator in the com-
bined filter of (9).
The limits of application of the combined filter will come
up when large slip angles are maintained for long durations of
time, i.e., when the vehicle has completely exceeded the han-
dling limit. Large slip angles for small periods of time (i.e., a
few seconds) can be handled quite well by the combined estima-
tion system, as shown by the experimental results in this paper.
IV. EXPERIMENTAL SET UP
The developed estimation algorithm was validated with ex-
perimental measurements on a Volvo XC90 SUV test vehicle.
Vehicle testing was conducted at Eaton Proving Ground, Mar-
shall, Michigan. A MicroAutoBox from dSPACE was used for
real-time data acquisition. A real-time one-antenna GPS system,
RT3000, from Oxford Technical Solutions was used for this
test to accurately measure the vehicle slip angle for compar-
ison with the performance of the slip angle estimation algorithm.
The RT3000 is a full, six axis inertial navigation system with
combined GPS. A Kalman filter integrates the inertial measure-
ment unit (IMU) with GPS to provide high update estimates of
the sensor bias, heading, and vehicle velocities, which can be
used to calculate the vehicle slip angle. The specification of slip
angle estimates from this system according to the manufacturer
is 0.15 [7]. The GPS outputs were connected to the MicroAu-
toBox via CAN communication at the baud rate of 0.5 Mb/s.
To obtain objective test results, the vehicle was instrumented to
record the relevant values from both vehicle CAN network and
GPS. The sampling time was set at 2 ms.
The signals required by the estimation algorithm of (9) are the
lateral acceleration, longitudinal velocity, yaw rate and steering
angle. The steering angle was obtained over the CAN network
bus of the Volvo XC90 while the other variables were obtained
from the RT3000 system. While the RT3000 system is an expen-
sive six axis inertial system combined with GPS, the observer
developed in this paper utilized only the raw lateral acceleration,
83
longitudinal velocity and yaw rate signals. As seen from the ex-
perimental results in Section VI, direct kinematics integration
of these raw signals to obtain slip angle results in a very sig-
nificant drift in slip angle estimates. The use of the combined
model-kinematics observer eliminates the drift. A photograph
of the test vehicle with the GPS system is shown in Fig. 7.
V. ROAD BANK ANGLE ESTIMATION
It should be noted that the kinematics-based estimator of (8)
requires knowledge of bank angle of the road. Here, we describe
the use of accelerometers on the vehicle body to calculate road
bank angle.
A. Filtering of Accelerometers
Accelerometers are used in this paper both in the estimation
of the slip angle and in estimation of the bank angle. Accelerom-
eters on the sprung mass of the vehicle can be quite noisy due
to unsmooth road surfaces and other vibration excitation. Ac-
celerometer signals must be filtered before use. Instead of a
regular linear low-pass filter, a median filter has been utilized
for the work described in this paper. A median filter [23] uses
sorting to find the median in a moving real-time window of data.
It has been shown that a median filter can completely remove
noise above a certain threshold frequency with the threshold de-
pending on the size of the moving window used for the median
calculation. While eliminating high frequency noise, the median
filter does not introduce much phase delay at the important lower
frequencies. Fig. 8 shows examples of using a median filter on
vertical and lateral accelerometers. The median filter window
size used was 20 samples. The example shown utilizes real ex-
perimental data from accelerometers.
B. Bank Angle Estimation Algorithm
The road bank angle can be estimated using the lateral
accelerometer and an additional vertical accelerometer. Fig. 9
shows a schematic diagram for road bank angle estimation
using the two accelerometers. is defined as a resultant ac-
celeration along the horizon line. At steady state, the kinematic
relationship between and the accelerometer signals
and can be formulated as
(10)
(11)
Hence, the road bank angle can be obtained from the two ac-
celerometers by solving (10) and (11). The horizontal accelera-
tion component is obtained as
(12)
The sign of in the above equation can be taken to be the
same as the sign of . The bank angle can be obtained as either
(13)
or
(14)
84 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 17, NO. 1, JANUARY 2009
Fig. 8. Median filter applied on (a) vertical acceleration and (b) lateral
acceleration.
Fig. 9. Bank angle estimation using two accelerometers.
Note that, if the accelerometers are placed on the sprung mass
(vehicle body), then the accelerometers experience a net angle
equal to (bank angleroll angle). Hence, the angle estimated by
this method will be the difference between the bank angle and
the roll angle. This estimation is appropriate since the actual
bank angle estimate required for slip angle estimation is this net
angle when the same lateral accelerometer is also utilized for
slip angle estimation.
Fig. 10. Lateral acceleration measured on banked road.
Fig. 11. Vertical acceleration measured on banked road.
Experimental results obtained using the above estimation al-
gorithms are shown in Figs. 1014. This experimental test was
conducted on a road consisting of stretches of straight road and
curved road. The bank angle at steady state on the curved por-
tions was 18 and there was a smooth transition in bank angle
in going from the straight road to curved and vice versa. The
net angle on the curved roads (bank angle roll angle) was es-
timated to be 13 .
The measured lateral acceleration and vertical acceleration
during the test are shown in Figs. 10 and 11, respectively. The
quantity is shown in Fig. 12. Note that
theoretically this quantity must always be positive. However,
due to noise in the accelerometer measurements, the reading
dips below zero on several occasions. In the real-time imple-
mentation of the bank angle estimation algorithm, this variable
was set to zero, whenever it dipped below zero. This ensured
that could always be calculated as a real number. Note that
when , then and , implying that the
vehicle is traveling on an unbanked road with zero roll angle.
PIYABONGKARN et al.: DEVELOPMENT AND EXPERIMENTAL EVALUATION OF A SLIP ANGLE ESTIMATOR FOR VEHICLE STABILITY CONTROL 85

Fig. 12. Real-time variation of the quantity A +A 0g .

Fig. 13. Bank angle calculation using lateral and vertical accelerometers and
algorithm 1.

Fig. 14. Bank angle calculation using lateral and vertical accelerometers and
algorithm 2.
Fig. 15. Slip angle estimation results in double lane-change test on high friction
surface. (a) Model-based method. (b) Kinematics-based method. (c) Combined
method.
The estimated bank angle using (13) is shown in Fig. 13 and
the estimated bank angle using (14) is shown in Fig. 14. Note
that both figures show the steady-state bank angle to be approx- pected value of the net angle (bank angle roll angle) being
imately 13 . This agrees with our earlier discussion of the ex- approximately 13 on the curved roads.
86 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 17, NO. 1, JANUARY 2009

Fig. 16. Slip angle estimation results in random driving test. (a) Model-based
method. (b) Kinematics-based method. (c) Combined method.
A 2-s dip in the bank angle estimate is found for the estimate
from algorithm 1. This dip corresponds to the spike in the mea-
sured vertical acceleration data that can be seen around the time
Fig. 17. Slip angle estimation results in double lane-change test on low friction
surface. (a) Model-based method. (b) Kinematics-based method. (c) Combined
method.
between 3545 s. Correspondingly there is a spike in the bank
angle estimate for the estimate from algorithm 2. It should be
PIYABONGKARN et al.: DEVELOPMENT AND EXPERIMENTAL EVALUATION OF A SLIP ANGLE ESTIMATOR FOR VEHICLE STABILITY CONTROL
TABLE I
ESTIMATION ERRORS FOR EXPERIMENTAL TESTS.
noted that the vehicle is just completing a cornering maneuver at
this time and returning to a straight and flat road. The roll angle
induced during this transient is likely the cause of the dip/ spike
in the data. The transient roll angle affects both measurements
and . Since these measurements have opposite signs in
(13) and (14), one of the algorithms has a transient dip while
the other has a transient spike.
VI. EXPERIMENTAL EVALUATION OF SLIP ANGLE ESTIMATION
The standard double lane-change maneuver, ISO 38881, on
a dry asphalt surface (for which the tireroad friction coefficient
was 0.85) was chosen to evaluate the estimation algorithm. The
estimated slip angle was compared with the slip angle detected
using a very accurate GPS system. The sampling time of the
estimating algorithm was set at 10 ms. To evaluate the system
robustness, vehicle tests were also conducted using a random
maneuver on a dirt surface.
The experimental results obtained in a double lane-change
maneuver with constant speed control at 70 mph are shown in
Fig. 15. In Fig. 15(a), the estimated slip angle using only the
model-based method follows the trend of the measured value
quite well but still has some significant errors due to the mod-
eling mismatch. The estimated value also contains a lot of noise,
which comes from the direct calculation with sensor signals.
Fig. 15(b) illustrates the estimated slip angle using the kine-
matics-based method. A significant drift was observed due to
the effect of integrating bias error. Fig. 15(c) shows the result
using the combined model-kinematics method. The estimator
dramatically reduces all errors or noise from the previous two
methods. The final estimate as seen by its comparison with the
GPS measurements is accurate and smooth and does not suffer
from any noticeable phase lag. The estimation algorithm was
also validated in a random driving maneuver on a dirt surface.
Similarly excellent results were obtained as shown in Fig. 16.
The combined estimate in this case also provides very clean,
accurate, and drift-free estimates of the slip angle, as seen in
Fig. 16(c).
The estimation algorithm was also validated on a packed
snow surface (which had a tire-road friction coefficient of
0.35), again using the standard double lane-change maneuver
with vehicle speed at 35 mph. Similarly, excellent results were
obtained as shown in Fig. 17. The combined estimate in this
case also provides very clean, accurate, and drift-free estimates
of the larger slip angle, as seen in Fig. 17(c).
The estimation errors for slip angle found in the different ex-
perimental tests are summarized in Table I. As seen from the
87
table, the rms error values are of the order of 0.150.2 on dry
road and of the order of 0.8 on icy road (when the slip angle i
VII. CONCLUSION
This paper developed a real-time algorithm for estimation of
slip angle using inexpensive sensors normally available for yaw
stability control applications. The algorithm utilizes a combina-
tion of model-based estimation and kinematics-based estima-
tion. The developed algorithm was evaluated through experi-
mental tests on a Volvo XC90 sport utility vehicle. The exper-
imental results indicate that the algorithm provides robust esti-
mate of the vehicle slip angle even in extreme maneuvers and
can be used effectively in vehicle stability controllers.
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Damrongrit (Neng) Piyabongkarn received the
B.S. degree from Chulalongkorn University, Thai-
land, the M.S. degree from the University of Texas
at Arlington, and the Ph.D. degree from the Univer-
sity of Minnesota, Minneapolis, all in mechanical
engineering.
He is currently a Control System Specialist En-
gineer with the Control Systems and Solutions De-
partment, Innovation Center, Eaton Corporation. His
active research interests include advanced controls,
system identification, and state estimation, with ap-
plications to automotive systems, electro-hydraulic systems, and micro sensor
design.
Dr. Piyabongkarn is a member of SAE and ASME. He was a recipient of the
2007 O. Hugo Schuck Award for the best paper at the 2006 American Control
Conference, the SAE 2006 Arch Colwell Merit Award, and the 20032004 Doc-
toral Dissertation Fellowship from the University of Minnesota.
Rajesh Rajamani received the B.Tech. degree from
the Indian Institute of Technology at Madras, Madras,
India, in 1989 and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from
the University of California, Berkeley, in 1991 and
1993, respectively.
After obtaining the Ph.D., he spent five years
working as a Research Engineer first with United
Technologies Research Center (UTRC) and then at
California PATH, before joining the University of
Minnesota, Minneapolis, where he is a Professor
of Mechanical Engineering. His research interests
include vehicle dynamics and control, intelligent transportation systems,
microsensors, and control system design. His current research activities in
transportation include the development of a novel narrow tilt-controlled
commuter vehicle, development of systems for real-time estimation of tire-road
friction coefficient on highway vehicles, development of battery-less wireless
traffic sensors and development of electronic stability control systems. He has
authored a textbook on vehicle dynamics and control and over 100 refereed
publications.
Dr. Rajamani was a recipient of several awards, including the CAREER
Award from the National Science Foundation, the 2007 O. Hugo Schuck
Award, the Ralph R. Teetor Award from the Society of Automotive Engineers,
the 2001 Outstanding Paper award from the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL
SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, and the Outstanding Achievement of the Year award
from United Technologies Research Center.
John A. Grogg received the B.S. degree in mechan-
ical engineering from Purdue University, Fort Wayne,
IN.
He is a Technical Specialist, Torque Control Prod-
ucts Division, Eaton Corporation, Marshall, MI. He
began his engineering career in the U.S. Navy, where
he served as a nuclear trained Machinist Mate aboard
a fast attack submarine. He then began his automo-
tive career as a Process Engineer with Dana Corpo-
rations Light Axle Division. After a number of pro-
motions at Dana, he then joined Eaton Corporations
Torque Control Products Division. He has 16 years of experience in the areas
of hydraulic systems, electro-mechanical systems, automotive drivelines, and
vehicle dynamics. He holds eight patents in the fields of planetary gear trans-
missions, clutches, and motor vehicle driveline control. He is the coauthor of
three SAE papers, two AACC papers, and one IEEE papers.
Mr. Grogg is a member of the Society of Automotive Engineers.
Jae Y. Lew received the Ph.D. degree in mechan-
ical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Tech-
nology, Atlanta, in 1993.
Since then, he has gained 14 years of research
and teaching experience in the field of control,
dynamics, robotics, and mechatronics. This com-
prises some five years as a Research Scientist with
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, six years
as an Assistant/Associate (tenured) Professor with
Ohio University, and four years as a Senior Principal
Scientist with the Eaton Innovation Center. His
research interest is in applying modern theory control to electro-mechanical
and hydraulics systems in real world use. Particularly, his previous work
encompasses active damping and contact control of a large structure robotic
system with flexibility, kinematic constraints and redundancy; human-robot
cooperative control; vehicle stability control system with active differentials;
and powertrain control of hydraulics hybrid vehicles.
Dr. Lew was a recipient of the ACC 2007 O. Hugo Schuck Award for the best
application paper and the SAE 2006 Arch Colwell Merit Award.