UC Davis

Additional sensors on a passenger vehicle can give more options for control but add cost to the manufacturer. Using existing on-board sensors to create an observer in place of installing a new sensor is a valuable option when possible. A model of a ground vehicle is created with the use of bond graphs for the design of a rack force output observer, which can be designed with two common on-board sensors. To design an observer that does not require information about the road condition, one of the sensors is fed forward, eliminating a system state. A strategy for reducing the bond graph is proposed for a controller-output-observer design and is tested. The accuracy of the observer is validated against real data, and shows promising results.