Design of a Robust Tyre Force Estimator Using an Extended Kalman Filter

This paper will present a method of estimating tyre friction force using an extended Kalman filter (EKF). A review of current and proposed methods for tyre force estimation from the literature will be given. The EKF developed will estimate vehicle motions and tyre forces as state estimates from a noisy measurement set. The tyre forces will be compared to those from a high order vehicle model with non-linear tyres, which is subjected to the same tests as the measured vehicle, in order to validate the estimated forces. The robustness of the estimator to noise and input errors will be tested. The ultimate aim of this work is to provide estimates of tyre forces to a controller such as ABS or TCS.