Roll and Bank Estimation Using GPS/INS and Suspension Deflections

This article presents a method that provides an estimate of road bank by decoupling the vehicle roll due to the dynamics and the roll due to the road bank. Suspension deflection measurements were used to provide a measurement of the relative roll between the vehicle body frame and the axle frame or between the sprung mass and the unsprung mass, respectively. A deflection scaling parameter was found via suspension geometry and dynamic analysis. The relative roll measurement was then incorporated into two different kinematic navigation models based on extended Kalman filter (EKF) architectures. Each algorithm was tested and then verified on the Prowler ATV experimental platform at the National Center for Asphalt Technology (NCAT). Experimental data showed that both the cascaded and coupled approach performed well in providing estimates of the current vehicle roll and instantaneous road bank