Control method to improve posture stability of narrow tilting vehicles

Narrow tilting vehicles (NTVs) have been proposed to address transportation issues, such as traffic congestion and lack of parking space, owing to their small footprint. However, a small footprint causes deterioration in posture stability. To address this challenge, NTVs tilt the vehicle body inward depending on the driving conditions, thereby reducing the lateral acceleration of the occupant. Three types of tilting control schemes have been proposed for NTVs: direct tilt control (DTC), steering tilt control (STC), and steering and direct tilt control (SDTC). In this study, we propose a simple method to control SDTC with a single roll direction equation of motion, by focusing on the yaw angular acceleration and roll inertia of the vehicle body. Using the proposed method, we were able to reduce the lateral acceleration of the occupant by 76% or more.