A mass and road slope integrated estimation strategy based on the joint iteration of least square method and Sage-Husa adaptive filter for autonomous logistics vehicle

Autonomous logistics vehicles are characterised by large changes in mass and their performances are greatly influenced by slope. In addition, sensors on autonomous vehicles are expensive and difficult to be installed considering application environment. To address these problems, a novel integrated estimation strategy for vehicle mass and road slope, which is based on the joint iteration of multi-model recursive least square (MMRLS) and Sage-Husa adaptive filter with the strong tracking filter (SH-STF), is proposed by utilising information involving speed, nominal engine torque and inherent parameters of vehicles. Firstly, due to the separate slowly-changing and time-dependent characteristics, the vehicle mass and road slope are estimated by using MMRLS and SH-STF separately. Secondly, the longitudinal dynamics gain and the steering dynamics gain are calculated separately based on each model’s residual probability distribution. Then, the two estimations module are combined by employing an iterative algorithm. Finally, the proposed strategy is verified by simulation and real vehicle tests. The tests result reveals that the estimation algorithm can effective estimate vehicle mass and road slope in real-time under straight going and steering conditions.