A control unit that controls control currents supplied to shock absorbers that generate damping forces according to the control currents determines coefficients of two functions that functionally identify an equivalent damping coefficient and an equivalent spring constant of each suspension based on relationships between the control current supplied to each shock absorber and the coefficients of the two functions that change according to the control current and a frequency of a relative vibration between a sprung and an unsprung of a vehicle, and calculates a relative displacement or a relative velocity between the sprung and the unsprung based on a vertical acceleration detected by a detection device and the two functions in which the coefficients are determined.

A controller 10 as a generation mechanism control portion includes a base control portion 15 that determines a lower limit value on an instruction signal (i.e., a base instruction value) that serves as a lower limit on a force to be generated by a variable damper 6 (a force generation mechanism) according to at least a running speed of a vehicle. The base control portion 15 corrects the base instruction value by a base instruction value calculation portion 28 based on a result of a determination about a road surface output from a road surface determination portion 26 (i.e., a result of detection by a road surface state detection portion). A vehicle behavior control apparatus is configured to variably control a damping force characteristic of the variable damper 6 according to a road surface state with use of an instruction value output from the controller 10.

Systems and methods are provided for determining a road profile along a predicted path. In one implementation, a system includes at least one image capture device configured to acquire a plurality of images of an area in a vicinity of a user vehicle; a data interface; and at least one processing device configured to receive the plurality of images captured by the image capture device through the data interface; and compute a profile of a road along one or more predicted paths of the user vehicle. At least one of the one or more predicted paths is predicted based on image data.

An object of the present invention is to provide a vehicle motion state estimation device and method that can estimate the vertical motion state amount with high accuracy by taking into consideration vertical force in which the frictional force acting in the front-rear direction or lateral direction of the wheel acts on the vehicle body due to the geometry of suspension. A vehicle motion state estimation device in a vehicle in which a wheel and a vehicle body are coupled via a suspension, the vehicle motion state estimation device including: a vertical motion-caused wheel speed component estimation unit that estimates a wheel speed component caused by vertical motion of the vehicle; a vertical force estimation unit that calculates vertical force in which frictional force of the wheel caused by motion of the vehicle acts on the vehicle body by geometry of the suspension; and a vertical motion estimation unit that estimates a state amount of vertical motion of a vehicle, in which the vertical motion estimation unit estimates a state amount of vertical motion of the vehicle based on a wheel speed component from the vertical motion-caused wheel speed component estimation unit and vertical force acting on the vehicle body from the vertical force estimation unit.

A method of on-demand energy delivery to an active suspension system is disclosed. The suspension system includes an actuator body, a hydraulic pump, an electric motor, a plurality of sensors, an energy storage facility, and a controller. The method includes disposing an active suspension system in a vehicle between a wheel mount and a vehicle body, detecting a wheel event requiring control of the active suspension; and sourcing energy from the energy storage facility and delivering it to the electric motor in response to the wheel event.

The present disclosure discloses a preview vehicle height control system and a method of controlling the same. The system includes a monitoring device configured to detect the road surface condition of a driving path of a vehicle, an active suspension configured to adjust a vehicle height, a memory configured to store a plurality of data maps distinguished based on a type of bump, each data map having a vehicle dynamic characteristic as an input and a tuning factor as an output, and a controller configured to derive the tuning factor based on a data map, among the plurality of data maps of the memory, corresponding to the bump detected by the monitoring device, derive a target vehicle height in a form of a Gaussian distribution by substituting the tuning factor, and control the active suspension to follow the derived target vehicle height.

A method to control an active shock absorber of a road vehicle. The active shock absorber is part of a suspension connecting a frame of the road vehicle to a hub of a wheel and has: a first element, which defines an end of the active shock absorber, a second element, which defines another end of the active shock absorber and is mounted so as to slide relative to the first element; and an actuator, which is configured to generate a force, which is applied between the two elements. The control method comprises the steps of: determining a vertical acceleration of the hub; determining a speed of translation between the two elements of the active shock absorber; determining a target force for the actuator of the active shock absorber based on the vertical acceleration of the hub and based on the speed of translation between the two elements of the active shock absorber; and controlling the actuator (10) of the active shock absorber so as to pursue the target force.

A system for controlling the stability of a vehicle equipped with semi-active dampers includes: an actuator, a plurality of sensors, a low-level control unit, a high-level control unit and a mid-level control unit adapted to execute an algorithm for calculating a damping level (C.sub.ref).

A vehicle suspension system includes: a road surface sensor provided in a vehicle body portion ahead of a front wheel to detect an unevenness of a road surface; an electromagnetic damper that applies a damping force and a propulsive force along a stroke direction to a vehicle body and the front wheel with the aid of a motor element; and an ECU. The road surface sensor includes: a first road surface sensor; and a second road surface sensor that overlaps the first road surface sensor in a vehicle width direction and is provided at a position behind the first road surface sensor. The ECU includes: a road surface height calculation unit that calculates a road surface height based on detection values from the road surface sensors and a movement amount of the vehicle; and a damper control unit that controls the motor element based on the calculated road surface height.

A method of on-demand energy delivery to an active suspension system is disclosed. The suspension system includes an actuator body, a hydraulic pump, an electric motor, a plurality of sensors, an energy storage facility, and a controller. The method includes disposing an active suspension system in a vehicle between a wheel mount and a vehicle body, detecting a wheel event requiring control of the active suspension; and sourcing energy from the energy storage facility and delivering it to the electric motor in response to the wheel event.