Narrow Tilting Vehicles: Mechanism, Dynamics, and Control (Synthesis Lectures on Advances in Automotive Technology)

To resolve the urban transportation challenges like congestion, parking, fuel consumption, and pollution, narrow urban vehicles which are small in footprint and light in their gross weight are proposed.

Apart from the narrow cabin design, these vehicles are featured by their active tilting system, which automatically tilts the cabin like a motorcycle during the cornering for comfort and safety improvements. Such vehicles have been manufactured and utilized in city commuter programs. However, there is no book that systematically discusses the mechanism, dynamics, and control of narrow tilting vehicles (NTVs).

In this book, motivations for building NTVs and various tilting mechanisms designs are reviewed, followed by the study of their dynamics. Finally, control algorithms designed to fully utilize the potential of tilting mechanisms in narrow vehicles are discussed. Special attention is paid to an efficient use of the control energy for rollover mitigation, which greatly enhance the stability of NTVs with optimized operational costs.

Chen Tang is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering with the University of Waterloo, where he earned his Ph.D. in 2018. He received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. in mechanical engineering from Tongji University, China in 2009 and 2012, respectively. His research interests include vehicle dynamics and control, advanced chassis systems, and intelligent transportation systems.