A contact deciding apparatus includes: reference signal creating units that create first and second reference signals, with a sine wave, that have the same frequency as a detection signal output from a sensor unit, and are respectively in phase with and out of phase with the detection signal; a demodulation circuit that creates first and second demodulation signals by multiplying the detection signal respectively by the first and second reference signals; low-pass filters that extract first and second direct-current signals, which are respectively the direct-current components of the first and second demodulation signals; and a contact deciding unit that makes a decision about contact according to the first direct-current signal. The contact deciding unit decides that the connection state between the sensor unit and the detection circuit is abnormal when the first and second direct-current signals change in the same direction and normal when these signals change in opposite directions.

A vehicle motion control method controls a motion state of a vehicle during a vehicle transient motion in which an acceleration in a lateral direction is generated in the vehicle. The vehicle motion control method includes: setting a corrected longitudinal acceleration for correcting a basic longitudinal acceleration determined in accordance with a required driving force for traveling of the vehicle; and determining a target longitudinal acceleration from the basic longitudinal acceleration and the corrected longitudinal acceleration, and operating a traveling actuator of the vehicle based on the target longitudinal acceleration. A direction and a magnitude of the corrected longitudinal acceleration are determined from a viewpoint of suppressing a change in a posture of an occupant of the vehicle in a roll direction.

A method for determining kinematics of a target includes generating a measured trace of a target position, speed, and angle of a target relative to an ego vehicle. The radius of the curve that the target is taking is calculated, using the generated trace. A number of paths possible to be followed by the target are projected, expressed as abstract movement functions of a polynomial degree and using as input the calculated radius. At each further cycle, higher probabilities are added to the paths projected in a previous measuring cycle which are equal with the newly projected ones. The projected paths are kept if the radius remains the same as in the previous measuring cycle. The current kinematics values are computed by smoothing filtering as predicted kinematics values, which are compared with the kinematics values resulted from the projected paths, to determine the final kinematics values.

A method to determine a roll angle (λ.sub.E) of a vehicle, wherein the roll angle (λ.sub.E) is calculated as a combination of at least a first roll angle variable (λ.sub.1) and a second roll angle variable (λ.sub.2), wherein the first roll angle variable (λ.sub.1) is determined from an acquired rolling rate ({dot over (λ)}.sub.m) of the vehicle using a first method, wherein the second roll angle variable (λ.sub.2) is determined from one or more further vehicle movement dynamics characteristic variables using a second method.

Methods and system are provided for generating regenerative braking torque at a front axle and a rear axle of a vehicle. In one example, the regenerative braking torque may be a function of a normal load applied to the front axle and a normal load applied to the rear axle.

A controller executes a method to manage an engine connect/disconnect decision in a powertrain having an engine, transmission, electric machine, and a battery pack and power inverter module (“TPIM”). In response to vehicle ground speed being less than a calibrated maximum electric vehicle accelerator pedal signal (“EV.sub.APS”) level, the controller calculates a delta APS (“ΔAPS”) value by subtracting a scaled APS value from the actual APS level. The scaled APS value is a scaled variant of a maximum EV.sub.APS value selected from a maximum EVS.sub.APS table, the latter populated based on inverter temperature, state of charge of the battery pack, and ground speed. When the ΔAPS value exceeds a threshold, the controller connects the engine to the transmission via an engine disconnect clutch. The engine is disconnected based on acceleration of the vehicle and the above-noted factors.

Yaw rate estimating device includes: information acquirer that acquires information on front image and information on vehicle speed; lane recognizer that recognizes traveling lane drawn on traveling route of own vehicle and curvature thereof based on information on front image; direction change rate calculator that calculates change rate of direction of traveling lane based on information on curvature of traveling lane and vehicle speed; yaw angle change rate calculator that calculates change rate of yaw angle of own vehicle with respect to direction of traveling lane based on information on curvature of traveling lane and vehicle speed; and lane yaw rate estimator that estimates lane yaw rate based on change rate of direction of traveling lane and change rate of yaw angle of own vehicle with respect to direction of traveling lane, wherein estimated lane yaw rate is used as yaw rate of own vehicle.

A tire force estimator includes a measuring unit configured to measure an acceleration of a vehicle body of a four-wheeled vehicle in a horizontal direction and an acceleration of at least one of four wheels of the four-wheeled vehicle in a vertical direction; and a processing unit configured to estimate a tire force acting on the at least one wheel from a ground surface in the vertical direction based on the acceleration of the vehicle body in the horizontal direction and the acceleration of the at least one wheel in the vertical direction.

A braking and driving force control device includes a target braking and driving force calculation unit, and a braking and driving force distribution unit. The braking and driving force distribution unit causes a driving device to generate a target braking and driving force in a case where the target braking and driving force is within the availability, and in a case where the target braking and driving force is less than a lower limit value of the availability, causes the driving device to generate a braking and driving force corresponding to the lower limit value of the availability, performs arithmetic processing of suppressing time variation on the lower limit value of the availability, and causes a braking device to generate a braking force corresponding to a difference between the lower limit value of the availability after the arithmetic processing and the target braking and driving force.

An embodiment acceleration limit control method includes determining an acceleration limit based on information on a passenger, determining a disturbance torque due to a disturbance, other than a drive source of a vehicle, based on at least a slope, determining a torque limit satisfying the acceleration limit based on the disturbance torque, and determining an output torque to be generated by the drive source based on the torque limit and a driver's requested torque.