Nonlinearity compensation based tilting controller for electric narrow tilting vehicles

Considering the traffic congestion and low energy consumption, small electric four-wheeled narrow tilting vehicles (NTV) are expected to be the new generation of city cars. In order to maintain lateral stability, the NTVs should have to lean into corners like two-wheeled vehicles. This is a challenge to keep a NTV stable during turning at different speeds. This paper aims to design a nonlinearity compensation based tilting controller for the direct tilting mechanism based NTVs. The controller adaptively compensates the nonlinearities of NTV roll dynamics in different vehicle speeds without the accurate vehicle models and, consequently, improve its robustness to rider’s behaviour. By utilising the proposed nonlinear tilting control system, both new riders and experienced riders can drive the NTVs easily with improved tilting stability. Simulations have been conducted to validate the applicability and robustness of the proposed control approach