Autonomous excavator has developed rapidly in recent years because of a shortage of labor and hazardous working environments for operating excavators. Presented herein are embodiments of a novel hierarchical planning system for autonomous machines, such as excavators. In one or more embodiments, the overall planning system comprises a high-level task planner for task division and base movement planning, and general sub-task planners with motion primitives, which include both arm and base movement in the case of an excavator. Using embodiments of the system architecture, experiments were performed for the trench and pile removal tasks in the real world and for the large-scale material loading tasks in a simulation environment. The results show that the system architecture embodiments and planner method embodiments generate effective task and motion plans that perform well in autonomous excavation.

A computer implemented method for controlling at least one driven and/or braked wheel of a heavy-duty vehicle includes configuring a default inverse tire model and a boost inverse tire model, where each inverse tire model represents a respective relationship between longitudinal wheel slip and longitudinal wheel force at the wheel, where the boost inverse tire model is associated with a higher maximum obtainable wheel slip value for the wheel compared to the default inverse tire model, obtaining a motion request indicative of a desired longitudinal force to be generated by the wheel, selecting the boost inverse tire model as active inverse tire model in response to detecting a boost signal and selecting the default inverse tire model as active inverse tire model otherwise, and controlling the at least one driven and/or braked wheel in dependence of the motion request and based on the active inverse tire model.

An aspect of the present disclosure relates to a vehicle control system configured to control a vehicle. The vehicle control system includes an electronic control unit configured to limit a driving force to be applied to the vehicle based on a brake temperature that is a temperature of a friction brake provided on a wheel of the vehicle.

A method for planning an activation action for an engine of a vehicle is disclosed. The method includes planning, according to a model, an activation action of an engine of a vehicle, and activating the engine according to the activation action. The model includes a state space comprising a current charge level of the battery and whether the engine is currently on or off. The activation action is selected from a set comprising a first action to turn on the engine to charge the battery and a second action to turn off the engine.

A method for integrated control of handling stability of a distributed drive electric vehicle is provided, in which a Magic Formula tire model is subjected to piecewise linear fitting to obtain a piecewise affine tire model; a hybrid logical dynamic model is established based on the piecewise affine tire model; a hierarchical integrated control strategy is adopted to obtain an upper-layer hybrid model predictive controller and a lower-layer four-wheel torque optimal allocation controller, so as to calculate an additional yaw moment, an additional front-wheel steering angle and a wheel drive torque. Related devices for implementing the integrated control method are also provided.

The invention relates to a method for autonomously controlling actuators of an automotive machine (10) which are adapted to influence the path and the speed of said automotive machine, including steps of: acquiring a reference path that said automotive machine should follow, determining a nominal value of at least one parameter enabling the automotive machine to follow the reference path, determining a current value of each of said parameters when said automotive machine follows the reference path, determining a value difference between the current value and the nominal value of each of said parameters, then computing, with a computer, a control setpoint for each actuator, according to each value difference, by means of a corrector.

According to the invention, the corrector allows jointly computing an exclusively lateral control setpoint of the automotive machine and an exclusively longitudinal control setpoint of the automotive machine.

A method performed in a control unit of a heavy-duty vehicle for estimating road friction, the method comprising, while the vehicle is in motion, generating a steering pulse having a limited time duration and a limited magnitude, measuring a response by the vehicle to the steering pulse, and estimating a road friction value based on the measured response by the vehicle.

A computer system determines, by taking into account topography information of a stretch of road to be travelled by a vehicle, to which extent service braking can be applied before the service brake of the vehicle is expected to overheat upon travelling the stretch of road, and reserves an amount of energy to be stored in an energy storage system of the vehicle for allowing endurance braking of the vehicle to avoid causing overheating of the service brake. The amount of energy reserved is adapted to the extent to which the service braking is determined to be applied upon the vehicle traveling the stretch of road.

A method to control a car having: a frame, which develops along a longitudinal direction having a front-rear orientation; at least two drive wheels; at least one electric motor connected to the two drive wheels; and a generation assembly having an electric generator and an internal combustion engine provided with a drive shaft, which is mechanically connected only to the electric generator and, therefore, is mechanically independent of the drive wheels. The control method comprises the steps of: determining a rotation speed of the rear drive wheels; and varying the rotation speed of the first internal combustion engine based on the rotation speed of the rear drive wheels.