Jonathan Loyola, Zachary Sabato, Minwoo Han, and Tyler Chilson
Additional sensors on a passenger vehicle can give more options for control but add cost to the manufacturer. Using existing on-board sensors to create an observer in place of installing a new sensor is a valuable option when possible. A model of a ground vehicle is created with the use of bond graphs for the design of a rack force output observer, which can be designed with two common onboard sensors. To design an observer that does not require information about the road condition, one of the sensors is fed forward, eliminating a system state. A strategy for reducing the bond graph is proposed for a controller-output-observer design and is tested. The accuracy of the observer is validated against real data, and shows promising results.