The angular wheel speed of a vehicle is estimated by tracking the frequency of chassis vibrations measured with an accelerometer. A Bayesian filtering framework is proposed, allowing for straightforward incorporation of supporting information. The framework is evaluated on a large number of experimental test drives, showing comparable performance to the standard periodogram method. We then demonstrate the flexibility of the framework using accelerometer information in two ways, combining the high-frequency vibrations with low-frequency information about the vehicle acceleration. This is shown to improve robustness and resolve many cases where stand-alone frequency tracking fails.

A novel method for accurate speed estimation of a vehicle using a deep learning convolutional neural network (CNN), with accelerometer and gyroscope measurements as input, is presented. It does not suffer from the fundamental drift problem present in all dead reckoning methods, and yet yields about 2 m/s in accuracy. Efficient drift-free vehicle speed estimates are essential in many automotive applications, where internal wheel speed sensors or GPS are unavailable. Using extensive experimental data, the proposed CNN method is compared to an existing frequency analysis method. The proposed method is shown to perform significantly better, particularly during low speed and rapid speed changes where the frequency method struggles.

Most navigation systems today rely on global navigation satellite systems (gnss), including in cars. With support from odometry and inertial sensors, this is a sufficiently accurate and robust solution, but there are future demands. Autonomous cars require higher accuracy and integrity. Using the car as a sensor probe for road conditions in cloud-based services also sets other kind of requirements. The concept of the Internet of Things requires stand-alone solutions without access to vehicle data. Our vision is a future with both invehicle localization algorithms and after-market products, where the position is computed with high accuracy in gnss-denied environments. We present a localization approach based on a prior that vehicles spend the most time on the road, with the odometer as the primary input. When wheel speeds are not available, we present an approach solely based on inertial sensors, which also can be used as a speedometer. The map information is included in a Bayesian setting using the particle filter (PF) rather than standard map matching. In extensive experiments, the performance without gnss is shown to have basically the same quality as utilizing a gnss sensor. Several topics are treated: virtual measurements, dead reckoning, inertial sensor information, indoor positioning, off-road driving, and multilevel positioning.

The speed of a wheeled vehicle is usually estimatedusing wheel speed sensors (WSS) or GPS. If these signals are unavailable, other methods must be used. We propose a novelapproach exploiting the fact that vibrations from rotating axles,with fundamental frequency proportional to vehicle speed, aretransmitted via the vehicle chassis. Using an accelerometer, these vibrations can be tracked to estimate vehicle speed whileother sources of vibrations act as disturbances. A state-space model for the dynamics of the harmonics is presented andformulated such that there is a conditional linear-Gaussiansubstructure, enabling efficient Rao-Blackwellized methods. Avariant of the Rao-Blackwellized point-mass filter is derived, significantly reducing computational complexity, and reducingthe memory requirements from quadratic to linear in thenumber of grid points. It is applied to experimental data from the sensor cluster of a car and validated using therotational frequency from WSS data. The proposed methodshows improved performance and robustness in comparisonto a Rao-Blackwellized particle filter implementation and afrequency spectrum maximization method.

The norm-optimal iterative learning control (ilc) algorithm for linear systems is extended to an estimation-based norm-optimal ilc  algorithm where the controlled variables are not directly available as measurements. A separation lemma is presented, stating that if a stationary Kalman filter is used for linear time-invariant systems then the ilc  design is independent of the dynamics in the Kalman filter. Furthermore, the objective function in the optimisation problem is modified to incorporate the full probability density function of the error. Utilising the Kullback–Leibler divergence leads to an automatic and intuitive way of tuning the ilc  algorithm. Finally, the concept is extended to non-linear state space models using linearisation techniques, where it is assumed that the full state vector is estimated and used in the ilc  algorithm. Stability and convergence properties for the proposed scheme are also derived.

The probabilistic hypothesis density (PHD) filter has grown in popularity during the last decade as a way to address the multi-target tracking problem. Several algorithms exist; for instance under linear-Gaussian assumptions, the Gaussian mixture PHD (GM-PHD) filter. This paper extends the GM-PHD filter to the common case with variable probability of detection throughout the tracking volume. This allows for more efficient utilization, e.g., in situations with distance dependent probability of detection or occluded regions. The proposed method avoids previous algorithmic pitfalls that can result in a not well-defined PHD. The method is illustrated and compared to the standard GM-PHD in a simplified multi-target tracking example as well asin a realistic nonlinear underwater sonar simulation application, both demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed method.

In this paper, the measurements of individual wheel speeds and the absolute position from a global positioning system are used for high-precision estimation of vehicle tire radii. The radii deviation from its nominal value is modeled as a Gaussian random variable and included as noise components in a simple vehicle motion model. The novelty lies in a Bayesian approach to estimate online both the state vector and the parameters representing the process noise statistics using a marginalized particle filter (MPF). Field tests show that the absolute radius can be estimated with submillimeter accuracy. The approach is tested in accordance with regulation 64 of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe on a large data set (22 tests, using two vehicles and 12 different tire sets), where tire deflations are successfully detected, with high robustness, i.e., no false alarms. The proposed MPF approach outperforms common Kalman-filter-based methods used for joint state and parameter estimation when compared with respect to accuracy and robustness.

An estimation-based iterative learning control (ILC) algorithm is applied to a realistic industrial manipulator model. By measuring the acceleration of the end-effector, the arm angular position accuracy is improved when the measurements are fused with motor angle observations. The estimation problem is formulated in a Bayesian estimation framework where three solutions are proposed: one using the extended Kalman filter (EKF), one using the unscented  Kalman filter (UKF), and one using the particle filter (PF).  The estimates are used in an ILC method to improve the accuracy for following a given reference trajectory.  Since the ILC algorithm is repetitive no computational restrictions on the methods apply explicitly. In an extensive Monte Carlo simulation study it is shown that the PF method outperforms the other methods and that the ILC control law is substantially improved using the PF estimate.

The iterative learning control (ILC) method improvesperformance of systems that repeat the same task several times. In this paper the standard norm-optimal ILC control law for linear systems is extended to an estimation-based ILC algorithm where the controlled variables are not directly available as measurements. The proposed ILC algorithm is proven to be stable and gives monotonic convergence of the error. The estimation-based part of the algorithm uses Bayesian estimation techniques such as the Kalman filter. The objective function in the optimisation problem is modified to incorporate not only the mean value of the estimated variable, but also information about the uncertainty of the estimate. It is further shown that for linear time-invariant systems the ILC design is independent of the estimation method. Finally, the concept is extended to non-linear state space models using linearisation techniques, where it is assumed that the full state vector is estimated and used in the ILC algorithm. It is also discussed how the Kullback-Leibler divergence can be used if linearisation cannot be performed. Finally, the proposed solution for non-linear systems is applied and verified in a simulation study with a simplified model of an industrial manipulator system.

The Quantization Theorem I (QT I) implies that the likelihood function can be reconstructed from quantized sensor observations, given that appropriate dithering noise is added before quantization. We present constructive algorithms to generate such dithering noise. The application to maximum likelihood estimation (mle) is studied in particular. In short, dithering has the same role for amplitude quantization as an anti-alias filter has for sampling, in that it enables perfect reconstruction of the dithered but unquantized signal’s likelihood function. Without dithering, the likelihood function suffers from a kind of aliasing expressed as a counterpart to Poisson’s summation formula which makes the exact mle intractable to compute. With dithering, it is demonstrated that standard mle algorithms can be re-used on a smoothed likelihood function of the original signal, and statistically efficiency is obtained. The implication of dithering to the Cramér–Rao Lower Bound (CRLB) is studied, and illustrative examples are provided.