Progress and future direction of Chassis control technology

The Chassis technology before the 1980s had been progressed as a technology of mechanical engineering field of that time. After the mid-eighties invention and practical application of four-wheel-steering system (4WS), especially the vehicle dynamics performance field out of Chassis technology became a main stream of research and development for control technology. From then on, research and development of vehicle dynamics performance has been carried out as a collaborated technology of mechanical engineering and control engineering. This paper focuses on the future tasks and direction of Chassis control technologies that mainly control cornering performance including 4WS, with three generations of Chassis control system development. The first generation is the initial stage of Chassis control technology, which started in the mid- 1980s, with the development of 4WS. The second generation started with the development of control by wire technology in the 1990s. The third generation is currently developing cooperative control technology and intelligent vehicle control technologies employing external sensors. (C) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.