A method for controlling a suspension system of a vehicle, as well as suspension systems, and a vehicle including a suspension system is provided. The suspension system may include at least one adjustable damping device that is controlled via a control signal, such as from a controller of the suspension system, in order to dynamically adjust the damping characteristic of the damping device. The control signal may be generated on the basis of at least one of current driving dynamics data and optically recorded information about an area of a ground surface.

The present invention achieves a technique that not only makes it possible to reduce sensor-related cost but also makes it possible to estimate a ground contact load of a vehicle with sufficiently high accuracy. A ground contact load estimation device (100) causes an acquisition section to acquire a physical quantity related to a vehicle, causes a reference inertia load calculation section (111) to calculate a reference inertia load with use of the physical quantity, uses the physical quantity to cause a correction value calculation section (112) to calculate an inertia load correction value, and causes an inertia load estimation section (110) to estimate an inertia load by adding the inertia load correction value to the reference inertia load.

The present invention achieves a technique that makes it possible to estimate a ground contact load of a vehicle with sufficiently high accuracy. A ground contact load estimation device (100) acquires a wheel angular speed, a steady load, and an inertia load of a vehicle, uses the steady load and the inertia load to cause a first gain calculation section (122) to calculate a first gain, multiplies a variation in wheel angular speed by a second gain so as to cause a tire effective radius variation calculation section (121) to calculate a tire effective radius variation, and multiplies the tire effective radius variation by the first gain so as to estimate a road surface load.

A weight sensing assembly for a semi-trailer truck enabling balancing of a load includes a sensing module, which is one of a plurality thereof. The sensing modules are mountable to wheels of the semi-trailer truck so that each axle has a sensing module engaged to outside wheels thereof. The sensing module obtains a pressure measurement of a tire engaged to the wheel and transmits it to an electronic device. Programming code on the electronic device enables it to utilize a pressure changes, upon positioning of a load upon the semi-trailer truck, to determine a weight that is positioned upon an associated axle. The electronic device calculates adjustments to positions of a sliding fifth wheel and of sliding tandems of the semi-trailer truck to obtain positions thereof that will achieve a legal weight distribution of the load. The electronic device presents, upon a screen thereof, the adjustments to a user.

A method for estimating damping characteristics of shock absorbers in an active or semi-active suspension involves providing a reference model of a nominal relation between a road severity index related to vertical acceleration values, and the mean driving current of the control valves of the shock absorbers, acquiring respective relative acceleration or speed data of at least the front wheels of the vehicle with respect to the vehicle body, determining a value of the road severity index starting from relative acceleration or speed data of the front wheels of the vehicle with respect to the vehicle body, acquiring values representative of the mean driving current of the control valve of each shock absorber, comparing acquired value of the mean driving current with an expected value of the nominal mean driving current determined as a function of the road severity index according to the reference model, and determining a degradation condition if the acquired value does not correspond to the expected value.

The electromagnetic suspension apparatus includes: an electromagnetic actuator provided in parallel with a spring member between a vehicle body and a wheel of a vehicle and configured to generate driving force involving vibration damping of the vehicle body; an information acquisition unit configured to acquire, through a high-pass filter, time-series information about a stroke position of the electromagnetic actuator; and an ECU configured to calculate target driving force of the electromagnetic actuator and use the calculated target driving force to execute driving force control of the electromagnetic actuator. The ECU corrects the target driving force such that when the stroke position on the basis of the high-pass-filter-processed time-series information, from which low-frequency components (steady state deviation) have been removed, is present in a neutral region including a neutral position, spring force of the spring member is made weaker than when the stroke position is present in a non-neutral region.

A vehicle height adjusting apparatus according to one aspect includes: a vehicle height adjusting member that adjusts height of a seat of a saddle-type vehicle, using hydraulic pressure; an oil supplying portion that supplies oil to the vehicle height adjusting member, using a motor; and a control section that estimates a load applied to the vehicle height adjusting member, from a current supplied to the motor and a stroke correspondence quantity of the vehicle height adjusting member, and controls the oil supplying portion based on the load to adjust the height of the seat.

provided is an information processing device comprising: a map database in which a control parameter for controlling the behavior of the vehicle is recorded for each vehicle type at each point on a road; a data reading unit that acquires vehicle information including at least vehicle type information and positional information of the vehicle and reads the control parameter corresponding to the travel point of the vehicle from the map database based on the vehicle information; a parameter setting unit that sets an application control parameter to be applied to control of the vehicle based on the control parameter read by the data reading unit; and a data update unit that acquires an observation value related to the behavior of the vehicle controlled based on the application control parameter from the vehicle and updates the map database based on the observation value.

Realized is a technique for estimating a state quantity of a vehicle, which technique is applicable to estimation of a vehicle weight and allows an increase in accuracy and speed of the estimation. A state quantity estimating device includes a data storing section (101), a predictive quantity computing section (102), an obtaining section (107), a Kalman gain computing section (103), an estimated quantity computing section (104) which calculates an estimated state quantity and estimated covariance, and a process noise covariance correcting section (106) which corrects process noise covariance. The estimated state quantity, the estimated covariance, and the process noise covariance, each of which has been calculated or corrected, are written in the data storing section (101) as a state quantity, state covariance, and process noise covariance, respectively, and are used in a next computation for estimating a state quantity.

An apparatus for estimating vehicle weight using a vehicle height adjusting device is provided. The apparatus includes a vehicle height adjusting device that raises or lowers four positions of front left (FL) and right (FR) sides and rear left (RL) and right (RR) sides of a vehicle body, respectively. A vehicle height controller operates the vehicle height adjusting device to raise or lower the FL and FR sides and the RL and RR sides of the vehicle body. A weight estimating unit measures time required for raising or lowering the vehicle body or operating speed of the vehicle body and calculates an expected vehicle weight value by comparing the time required or the operating speed with a preset reference data.