2011 IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium (IV)

Baden-Baden, Germany, June 5-9, 2011

A new nonlinear observer using unscented Kalman filter to estimate

sideslip angle, lateral tire road forces and tire road friction coefficient
Qi Cheng, Alessandro Correa-Victorino and Ali Charara
Abstract The active safety systems, such as Electronic
Stability Program (ESP) and Traction Control System (TCS),
have been used widely in the modern production auto-mobile.
These safety control systems function well only when the
vehicle motion information is known. To achieve this purpose,
various sensors are equipped in the production cars in order
to detect vehicle motion information like yaw, wheel velocities
and accelerations. However some key variables of the vehicle
dynamic and road conditions, such as the sideslip angle, the tire
road forces and the tire road friction coefficient are difficult to
measure directly for technology or economic reasons. A new
observer which uses the unscented Kalman filter to estimate
simultaneously the sideslip angle, lateral tire road forces and
the tire road friction coefficient has been proposed in this paper.
The advantage of this observer is that no additional sensors is
needed when the ESP has been installed in the auto-mobile. The
performance of the proposed observer is demonstrated through
the Chicane test.

Fig. 1.

Tire road friction curves

I. INTRODUCTION
The motion of a vehicle is governed by the forces generated between the tires and the road. The exact knowledge
of the tire road forces is crucial to control vehicle behavior
and to reduce the accidents. In general, the tire road force
is decided by the wheel slip angle, the normal vertical load
and the tire road friction coefficient. When the wheel slip
angle and the tire road friction coefficient are known, the tire
road forces can be calculated using a tire model. The safety
control systems like ESP and TCS function well only when
these information are known. However, the sideslip angle and
tire road friction coefficient can not be measured directly
from the sensors because of economic reasons. Therefore,
these important data must be observed or estimated. With
these information, the vehicle handling and the safety can
be greatly enhanced.
The lateral tire road force is a nonlinear function of the
tire slip angle, the road friction coefficient and the vertical
normal load. Its principle characteristics is shown in Figure 1.
If the tire slip angle and the lateral friction force are known,
then the friction coefficient can be inferred. In the practical
applications, neither the tire slip angle nor the lateral friction
force are available. In some studies, the friction coefficient
is treated to be a known parameter, then the tire slip angle
can be calculated from the vehicle lateral dynamics, see [1]
and [2].
This work is supported by the French ANR project PERCOIVE
Qi Cheng, Alessandro Correa-Victorino and Ali Charara are
with the Heudiasyc Laboratoire (UMR CNRS 6599), Universite
de Technologie de Compi`egne, Centre de recherche Royallieu,
BP20529 - 60205 Compi`egne, France, qi.cheng@hds.utc.fr,

alessandro.victorino@hds.utc.fr,
ali.charara@hds.utc.fr.

978-1-4577-0891-6/11/$26.00 2011 IEEE

How to estimate tire road friction coefficient has been

widely discussed in the literature, see [3], [4], [5], [6], [7]. In
[3], an eight degree-of-freedom model has been established,
and then the tire slip angle and the lateral friction forces
are estimated by the extended Kalman filter (EKF). The
friction coefficient is selected from a set of hypotheses. From
Figure 1, it is shown that when the tire slip angle is small, the
curves are close to each other, hence the identification of the
friction coefficient is not reliable. When the tire slip angle
is large, the tire model is quite nonlinear, the EKF is not
guaranteed to be convergent. In [6], the friction coefficient
is estimated using the vehicle lateral dynamics and the
lateral motion measurements, a GPS measurements or torque
measurements are needed in this system. A similar idea to
estimate individual wheel friction coefficient which using the
vehicle longitudinal dynamics is proposed in [7]. A new
nonlinear observer which use the vehicle lateral dynamics
and the front tire aligning moment to estimate simultaneously
the tire slip angle and tire road friction coefficient has
recently been developed by [5]. The good performance of this
observer is verified through experiments, but the information
of front tire aligning moment is not always available. A good
review of the road friction coefficient estimation is given by
[4]. The background of the vehicle dynamics can be found
in some excellent books, e.g. [8], [9] and [10].
The EKF is popular used to estimate the sideslip angle
and the tire forces in a large literature, see [11],[12] and
[13]. However, the EKF estimation results become more and
more biased as the nonlinearity of the vehicle model is more
evident. The Unscented Kalman filter (UKF), see [14], is an
alternative to the EKF for its flexibility. In [15] and [16],

709

the UKF has been used to estimate the sideslip angle with
hypothesis that the tire road friction coefficient is known.
In practice, this hypothesis may be difficult to be realized,
which motivates us to apply the UKF in the situation that
friction coefficient is unknown in advance. The main idea
of this paper is to consider the unknown friction parameter
as a part of the augmented state ([17]) and then use UKF
to estimate this augmented state. Here we choose a FourWheel Vehicle Model to describe the vehicle dynamics and
use the Dugoff model to simulate the lateral tire forces. The
UKF is employed to estimate simultaneously the sideslip
angle, lateral tire road forces and the tire road friction
coefficient in this nonlinear model. Compared to the method
in [5], our method does not need any information about
front tire aligning moment and further avoid the imprecise
measurement of this variable.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows.
The vehicle model and the lateral tire forces models are
introduced in Sections II and Sections III. The principle
of the UKF is presented in Section V. In Section IV, we
present a new nonlinear observers which use the UKF to
estimate the state and the parameter simultaneously. The
experimental results are illustrated in Section VI. Finally,
some conclusions are given in Section VII.

11

11

Fy11
Fy11
Vg

21

Fy21

21

Fx21

Fy22

12 12

Fy12

Fx11

Fx12

22
L1
Fx22

22
L2

Fig. 2.

Four-Wheel Vehicle Model

assumed equal 0.
1
Vg = [Fx11 cos( 11 ) + Fx12 cos( 12 )
m
+ (Fx21 + Fx22 )cos() + Fy11 sin( 11 )+

II. VEHICLE MODEL

The bicycle model has been widely used to describe the
vehicle dynamics for its simplicity, see [5] and [18]. Since the
individual wheel information is omitted, the bicycle model is
not convenient in some application. In this paper, we choose
the Four-Wheel Vehicle Model (FWVM) to represent vehicle
velocity and yaw rate evolutions. A detailed presentation of
the FWVM is given by [18] and [8].
An illustration of the FWVM is given in Figure 2, where
the aerodynamic drag force and the rolling resistance are
ignored. Further more, we suppose the road is plane. Fy11 ,
Fy12 , Fy21 and Fy22 are the lateral forces at the front left,
front right, rear left and rear right wheel. The Fxij , (i, j =
1, 2) are the longitudinal forces accordingly. is the yaw rate
and ij , (i, j = 1, 2) are the steering angles at each wheel.
ax and ay are the longitudinal and lateral accelerations
respectively. L1 and L2 are the distances from the center
of gravity to the front axle and the rear axle, respectively.
E is the vehicle track. Vg is the velocity at the center of
gravity. is the sideslip angle at the center of gravity. The
ij , (i, j = 1, 2) are the sideslip angles at each wheel.
A simplified FWVM can be described by the following
equations, where m is the mass of the vehicle and the Iz
is the yaw moment of the inertia. In this model, velocity
longitudinal acceleration ax and the lateral
Vg , yaw rate ,
accelerations ay can be measured by the cheap sensors
equipped in most of modern vehicles. But the sensors used
for detecting the sideslip angle and tire forces are costly.
For the propose of simplicity, the longitudinal forces at rear
wheels are omitted and the steering angles at rear wheels are

Fy12 sin( 12 ) + (Fx21 + Fx22 )sin()]

1
= [L1 (Fy11 cos(11 ) + Fy12 cos(12 )
Iz
+ Fx11 sin(11 ) + Fx12 sin(12 ))
E
+ (Fy11 sin(11 ) Fy12 cos(12 )
2
+ Fx12 cos(12 ) Fx11 cos(11 ))],
1
[Fx11 sin(11 ) + Fx12 sin(12 )
=
mVg
+ Fy11 cos(11 ) + Fy12 cos(12 )

+ Fy21 cos() + Fy22 cos()] ,

(1)

1
[Fy11 sin(11 ) Fy12 sin(11 )
m
+ Fx11 cos(11 ) + Fx12 cos(12 )].
1
ay = [Fy11 cos(11 ) + Fy12 cos(11 ) + Fy21
m
+ Fy21 + Fx11 sin(11 ) + Fx12 sin(12 )].

ax =

III. TIRE MODEL

The exact model of the tire-road contact forces is complex,
see [19]. When the sideslip angle is small, the lateral force
is linear with the wheel slip angle. Fyij = Cij ij , i, j =
1, 2, where Cij is the cornering stiffness of each wheel.
When the sideslip angle increases, the lateral force increases
nonlinearly with it. After a threshold, the road-tire forces
begin to saturate. For the reason of simplicity, the linear
models are popular used in the literatures, see [8] and [19]
as examples. One of nonlinear models, the famous Pacejka

710

Model (also called the magic formula) in [20], assumes

some specific parameters determined by the tire and the
road conditions known. When these specific parameters are
actually unknown, other nonlinear models like the Dugoff
model in [21] are expected. Following the same reason, we
choose the Dugoff model.
The Dugoff model is more complex than the linear model,
defined as
Fyij = Cij tan ij f (),
(2)
where Cij is the cornering stiffness which is assumed to be
known, ij is the slip angle at each wheel (see Figure 2)
and is calculated by
11
12
21
22

L1
,
= 11
Vg
L1
= 12
,
Vg
L2
,
= +
Vg
L2
,
= +
Vg

(3)

(5)
(6)

Fzij
,
=
2Cij tan i,j

(8)

where is the friction coefficient between the tire and the

road, Fzij is the vertical force on the wheel.
When the sideslip angle changes, there is a time lag for
the lateral forces to act. A dynamic model of tire forces has
been proposed by [9]:

Schama of the observer

model to obtain a discrete time system. A general discrete

state space model is given by:
xt = f (xt1 , ut , t ) + t ,
yt = h(xt , ut , t ) + t ,

(4)

where the steering angles at rear wheels are assumed equal

0.
f () is a nonlinear function of the slip angle and the
vertical force,
(
(2 ) if < 1,
f () =
(7)
1
if 1,
and

Fig. 3.

(10)
(11)

where xt is the state variable, yt is the observation variable,

ut is the input variable and the t is the unknown parameter,
t and t are the state and the observation noises. Normally,
UKF can estimate the state xt when t is known.
In this paper, both the state xt and the t need to be
estimated, so the state parameter joint estimation ([17]) is
chosen for its simplicity and validity. The principle of the
joint estimation is to treat the parameter t and the state xt
as a new state zt = [xt t ]T . The new state space evolution
equation is:
 


 
t
xt
f (xt1 , ut , t1 )
+
(12)
zt =
=
t1
nt
t

where nt is a noise vector which has the same dimension as

the parameter . The new value of the parameter t is used
in the observation equation:
yt = h(xt , ut , t ) + t .

(13)

(9)

Then, the classical UKF is used to estimate the augmented

state zt from Equations (12) and (13).
In Equation (12), the state vector xt contains vehicle
velocity, yaw rate, sideslip angle and lateral forces:
, Fy11 , Fy12 , Fy21 , Fy22 ].
xt = [Vg , ,

where i is the relaxation length which is supposed known,

the Fyij is the static forces calculate by the Dugoff model
(Equation (2)).

The parameter is the tire road friction coefficient . The

augmented state vector is:
, Fy11 , Fy12 , Fy21 , Fy22 , ].
zt = [Vg , ,

Vg
Fyij =
(Fyij + Fyij ),
i

IV. NONLINEAR OBSERVER

The objective of the nonlinear observer is to simultaneously estimate the sideslip angle and the tire road friction
coefficient. A state space model can be used to achieve
this purpose, where the sideslip angle and lateral tire road
forces are taken as the state variable and the tire road
friction coefficient is the unknown system parameter. Then
the objective is to simultaneously estimate the state and the
parameter. The structure of the observer is shown in Figure 3.

The evolution of the state vector Vg , and is given

by the Four-Wheel Vehicle Model (Equation (1)) and the
evolution of the lateral tire forces are described by the
dynamic Dugoff model (Equation (9)).
The observation vector yt comprise vehicle velocity, yaw
rate, longitudinal acceleration and lateral acceleration:
ax , ay ].
yt = [Vg , ,
(14)
We suppose that the steer angles, the vertical normal loads
and the longitudinal forces are known. The input vector is:

In order to use the UKF, we use an Euler discretization

for all continuous variables in the vehicle model and the tire

711

ut = [11, 12, Fz11 , Fz12 , Fz21 , Fz22 , Fx11 , Fx12 ].

(15)

The principle of the UKF is given in the next section.

V. UNSCENTED KALMAN FILTER

Since the EKF uses the method of linearization to approach the true nonlinear systems, the EKF performs badly
when the system is severely nonlinear. In order to overcome
these drawbacks, the UKF was first developed by [14]. It
is essentially a kind of Quasi-Monte Carlo method ([22]).
The ability of processing nonlinearity without linearization
is the advantage of the UKF compared to the EKF. The UKF
uses several so called sigma points to calculate recursively
the means and covariances used in the Kalman filter. These
sigma points propagate through the true nonlinear system.
The conditional expectation E[xt |y1:t ] is calculated by the
average of the sigma points. More details are available in
[23]. In this paper, the UKF is implemented for the join
estimation of parameter and states in Dugoff model. The
algorithm using UKF is summarised following.
1) Initialization, t = 0 :
x
0 = E[x0 ],

P0 = E[(x0 x
0 )(x0 x
0 )T ].

2) The n-dimensional random variable xt1 with mean

x
t1 and covariance Pt1 is approximated by the 2n+
1 sigma points Xi,t1 given by
Xi,t1 = xt1 ,
Xi,t1
Xi,t1

i = 0,
1/2

= xt1 + (Pt1 )i ,
i = 1, . . . , n,
1/2
= xt1 (Pt1 )in , i = n + 1, . . . , 2n,

where > 0 is a tuning parameter for the spread of

1/2
the sigma points around x
t1 and (Pt1 )i is the ith
column of the square root of the covariance matrix
Pt1 .
3) Prediction :
The sigma points are transformed through the state
equation (10): Xi,t|t1 = f (Xi,t1 ).
The predicted mean and covariance are computed
as
x
t|t1 =
Pt|t1 =

2n
X

i=0
2n
X

wi Xi,t|t1 ,

VI. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

The performances of nonlinear observer based on the joint
UKF is demonstrated using simulated data in a Chicane
test. In our simulation, all the data are generated by the
CALLAS software, which is a professional vehicle dynamic
simulator developed by OKTAL Company. The CALLAS
can take into account lots of practical influences like vertical
suspension, tires type, engine model, kinematics, tire adhesion and aerodynamics. The simulation environment given
by the CALLAS is very close to the practical experimental
environment.
In the Four-Wheel Vehicle Model, the steer angle 11, 12,
the vertical normal loads Fz11 , Fz12 , Fz21 , Fz22 and the
longitudinal forces Fx11 , Fx12 are input vectors, tire road
friction coefficient is the unknown parameter; vehicle
sideslip angle and lateral forces
velocity Vg , yaw rate ,
Fy11 , Fy12 , Fy21 , Fy22 are the state variable, and the vehicle
velocity Vg , yaw rate and lateral acceleration ay are the
system observations. The road condition is set to be dry
( = 1). The initial velocity of vehicle is 60km/h, the
sampling interval is 0.01 second.
To measure the performance of the state xt and the
parameter
estimations, for t = 1, . . . , T , we introduce the
root mean-squared error
v
u
T
u1 X
(xt x
t )2 .
RM SE = t
T t=1
The RMSEs of estimated tire road friction coefficient
,
estimated state variables Fyij , i, j = 1, 2, and sideslip angle
() are given in Table I. All the RMSE values are small
compared to the true values.

wi (Xi,t|t1 x
t|t1 )

State
Sideslip angle ()
Lateral force (Fy11 )
Lateral force (Fy12 )
Lateral force (Fy21 )
Lateral force (Fy22 )
Friction coefficient (
)

i=0

(Xi,t|t1 x
t|t1 )T + Q,
where w0 = 1 n/ 2 , wi = 1/(2 2 ) for i 6= 0,
and Q is the covariance of the state noise t in the
state equation.
The points Xi,t|t1 are transformed through the
observation equation (11): Yi,t|t1 = h(Xi,t|t1 ).
The prediction of yt is obtained by y
t =
P2n
w
Y
.
i=0 i i,t|t1
4) Update :
The covariance of the prediction error of yt is estiP
t )(Yi,t|t1
mated by Py,t = 2n
i=0 wi (Yi,t|t1 y
T
yt ) + R, where R is the covariance of the
observation noise t in the observation equation.

The cross covariance of the prediction errors

of xt and yt is approximated by Pxy,t =
P
2n
t|t1 )(Yi,t|t1 yt )T .
i=0 wi (Xi,t|t1 x
The state estimate is updated by xt = x
t|t1 +
1
(yt yt ).
Pxy,t Py,t
The covariance of the estimation error of xt is
1 T
Pxy,t .
estimated by Pt = Pt|t1 Pxy,t Py,t

RMSE (degree)
0.961
295
342
350
308
0.070

TABLE I
E STIMATION RESULTS OF THE SIDESLIP ANGLE , LATERAL FORCES AND
FRICTION COEFFICIENT

We also plot the estimated and true values of , Fyij ,

i, j = 1, 2, and at the same time respectively in Figures 5, 4, 6, 7, 8 and 9, for the comparative reason. The
estimated value changes around the true one and tend to

712

be stable with time, although in the burn-in phase, it has a

peak with 1.3 value. Then in the stable phase, the estimated
is around 1.05, which can be taken as a precise estimation.
For the state variables, Fyij , i, j = 1, 2, and , the
estimated value (the blue line) always closely follows the
change of true value (the red line). Even when the estimated
unfortunately goes relatively far from the true value, joint
UKF still gives good state estimation.

1000

Lateral force (N)

0
1000
2000
3000
4000
5000

1.2

6000

1.1
Fig. 6.

1
0.9

3
Time

Simulation results: Lateral force at front left wheel

6000
Estimeted
True

5000

Fig. 4.

3
Time

4000
3000

Simulation results: Tire road friction coefficient

Lateral force (N)

0.8

2000
1000
0

Estimated
True

Sideslip angle (deg)

Estimeted
True

2000

estimated
true

1.3
Friction coefficient

3000

1000

2000
3000

Fig. 7.

3
Time

Simulation results: Lateral force at front right wheel

Fig. 5.

3
Time

Simulation results: Sideslip angle

VII. CONCLUSIONS
A nonlinear observer has been proposed to simultaneously
estimate sideslip angle, lateral tire road forces and tire road

friction coefficient. A state space model is established where

the sideslip angle and the lateral tire road forces are the
state variable and the tire road friction coefficient is the
unknown parameter. The structure of the observer is based
the Four-Wheel Vehicle Model, which describes the tyre
forces with the Dugoff model. Then, a joint UKF in which
the parameter is treated as a part of the augmented state
is used to state and parameter simultaneously. This design
offers a online estimation of tire road friction coefficient
without additional sensors. This can be more useful if the
road friction coefficient changes when the vehicle runs on
roads with different material. Because under this condition,

713

R EFERENCES
3000
Estimeted
True

2000

Lateral force (N)

1000
0
1000
2000
3000
4000
5000

Fig. 8.

3
Time

Simulation results: Lateral force at rear left wheel

5000
Estimeted
True

4000

Lateral force (N)

3000
2000
1000
0
1000
2000
3000

Fig. 9.

3
Time

Simulation results: Lateral force at rear right wheel

the changed road friction coefficient will lead the state

estimation worse in the other observer taken constant road
friction coefficient. The joint UKF proposed in this paper
can catch the road friction coefficient changes and still give
precise state estimation. The performances of this nonliner
observer are demonstrated by the simulation results.
VIII. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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The authors are are grateful to two anonymous referees

for their helpful comments.

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