Mercedes-benz Aktiengesellschaft

Ali Aminpour

Michael Reiner

Bernhard Topfer

Wolfgang Scheer

Norman Millner

The gradient of a roadway in the direction of travel of the vehicle is identified from signals present in the vehicle without any additional sensor systems. A freely rolling state of the at least one driven axle of the vehicle is detected at least once. In this state, the wheels of the driven axle also roll free of slip. In order to balance out the wheel speeds between the driven axles and the non-driven axles, the difference speed between the wheel speed of a driven axle and the wheel speed of a non-driven axle is identified. At the same time, the value of the braking, that is to say the value of the deceleration of the vehicle, is measured. The value of a gradient constant is identified from the identified values of the difference speeds and the braking operations. The gradient of the roadway can be determined with the gradient constant from the values of the difference speed and the values of the braking then identified. The gradient information can then be used to control the vehicle.

Method for determining the gradient of a roadway

A method utilizes components of an existing anti-lock brake system (ABS) in order thereby to achieve an automatically self-optimizing inter-axle brake-pressure distribution acting far below the wheel lock limit. For this purpose, the brake pressure and, hence, the brake-force distribution are regulated axle-specifically far below the wheel lock limit too. An immediate dynamic intervention is, on one hand, effected in the case of sufficiently large wheel-speed differences between the axles. On the other hand, an adaptive predetermination of correct brake-force distributions is made the basis for each current regulating intervention. Even before the occurrence of large speed differences, the brake-force distribution expedient in each case for these is here predictively determined, stored, and, if required, correspondingly adapted to current requirements, i.e. corrected, in the course of subsequent dynamic braking demands. Requisite determination parameters are obtained for each journey either via characteristic diagrams specific to the family of vehicles or are determined individually on the individual vehicle by a learning approximation routine.

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Waiblingen, Germany

Ali Aminpour