Improving the active safety of road vehicles by sensing forces and moments at the wheels

The paper reviews and presents which is the envisaged improvement of the active safety of road vehicles arising from the real time measurement of forces and moments at the wheels. There are many researches undertaken in the world attempting to find devices able to measure accurately, the forces and the moments at the wheels of road vehicles. In particular, a six-component measuring Wheel developed and patented at the Politecnico di Milano is presented. The active safety of road vehicles is, related to longitudinal motions (braking, traction control), lateral motions (yaw moment control) and vertical motions (road holding). In each of these three fields the paper briefly reviews the up-to-date controls. Based on such a state-of-the art survey. the weak points of today's controls are highlighted. A proposal of new controls is presented aiming to use all of the information available and provided by six-axis measuring hubs at the wheels. A considerable improvement of the vehicle active safety can he achieved by sensing the forces at the wheels.