A new application of the Extended Kalman Filter to the estimation of roll angles of a motorcycle with Inertial Measurement Unit

Abstract

The capability of providing a real-time reliable measure of the actual roll angle is of great importance for the racing motorcycle dynamics. This study presents a method based on an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) for the estimation of the actual roll angle of a motorcycle equipped with an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU), with the advantage of not needing the development and implementation of a complete motorcycle model. Measured data which, depending on the additional instrumentation available on the motorcycle, do not form a complete set of input data for the estimation algorithm, induce the introduction of approximations affecting the accuracy of the results. A thorough error analysis is carried out by means of numerical simulations along with experimental validations. As a result, a novel approximate form for the kinematical model of the IMU is developed, yielding an overall good accuracy in the roll angle estimates.

Inverse Optimal Control in State Derivative Space System with Applications in Motor Control

“…x(t), u(t) < 0 (18) For simplicity of presentation, we omit (t) in the following formula derivation. Second, select another design parameter, namely the performance integrand L .…”

“…For example, accelerations sensed by accelerometers [13] and voltages or more precisely speaking current derivatives sensed by inductors are directly measured state derivative related signals in many applications. Especially, velocities and accelerations which can be modelled as state derivative vector are easily available from measurements in vehicle dynamic systems [14][15][16][17][18] and piezoelectric smart structure systems [4]. For those applications, we should not insist to apply state related feedback in control designs because additional numerical integrations or integrators are needed in implementation that result in complex and expensive controllers.…”

Roll Angle Estimation of a Motorcycle through Inertial Measurements

“…In [ 9 ], an EKF and an unscented Kalman filter (UKF) were compared, achieving a similar level of accuracy. In [ 10 ], another EKF based on inertial measurement was presented. It was applied to a racing motorcycle and validated on racing tracks.…”