Fun-to-Drive by Feedback*

This paper is devoted to new challenging control problems arising in the automotive industry as a consequence of the customer-driven performance specifications adopted by car builders which have dramatically increased the number of new proposed automated features, where feedback interacts with the driver. In this paper, the notion of “Fun-to-Drive by Feedback” relates, to the ability to design a control scheme resulting in good ride comfort behavior as well as acceptable safe operation. The paper shows how control techniques can be used to solve some of these problems, and discusses how these subjective notions can be formalized thanks to concepts such as passivity and model matching control. The paper presents a series of examples concerning systems that provide assisted automated devices (i.e., electrical power steering and assisted clutch synchronization), as well as systems with fully automated features (i.e., steer-by-wire system and stop-and-go), in which these aspects are assessed.