Vehicle Parameter and Road Grade Estimation Based on Kalman Filter: Theory and Experiments

Road slope and vehicle parameter is of great importance in vehicle control. In order to estimate the on-line road grade, an accelerometer is mounted on a vehicle. A state-space model for the Kalman Filter is established. And R and Q matrix of the filter is tuned offline to optimize the filter. By experiments, the feasibility of the model as well as the algorithm is verified to be able to estimate the road grade online with precision and little delay. Other vehicle parameters can therefore be estimated with the road grade.