Purpose: This paper studies the lateral stability regulation of intelligent electric vehicle (EV) based on model predictive control (MPC) algorithm. Design/methodology/approach: Firstly, the bicycle model is adopted in the system modelling process. To improve the accuracy, the lateral stiffness of front and rear tire is estimated using the real-time yaw rate acceleration and lateral acceleration of the vehicle based on the vehicle dynamics. Then the constraint of input and output in the model predictive controller is designed. Soft constraints on the lateral speed of the vehicle are designed to guarantee the solved persistent feasibility and enforce the vehicle’s sideslip angle within a safety range. Findings: The simulation results show that the proposed lateral stability controller based on the MPC algorithm can improve the handling and stability performance of the vehicle under complex working conditions. Originality/value: The MPC schema and the objective function are established. The integrated active front steering/direct yaw moments control strategy is simultaneously adopted in the model. The vehicle’s sideslip angle is chosen as the constraint and is controlled in stable range. The online estimation of tire stiffness is performed. The vehicle’s lateral acceleration and the yaw rate acceleration are modelled into the two-degree-of-freedom equation to solve the tire cornering stiffness in real time. This can ensure the accuracy of model.

Background and Objective: Severe pneumonia is a critical respiratory disease with high mortality. There is insufficient evidence on the efficacy and safety of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) adjuvant therapy for severe pneumonia. This study aims to identify, describe, assess, and summarize the currently available high-quality design evidence on TCM adjuvant therapy for severe pneumonia to identify evidence gaps using the evidence mapping approach.Methods: Systematic searches were performed on English and Chinese online databases (PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane Library, Web of Science, CNKI, WanFang Data, CQVIP, and SinoMed) to identify papers from inception until August 2023 for inclusion into the review. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs), systematic reviews (SRs), and meta-analyses concerning TCM adjuvant therapy for severe pneumonia or its complications in adults were included. The risk of bias in RCTs was evaluated by using the Cochrane Handbook ROB tool. The Assessment of Multiple Systematic Reviews 2 (AMSTAR-2), the Risk of Bias in Systematic Review (ROBIS) tool, and the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) system were used to assess the methodological quality, risk of bias, and evidence quality of SRs or meta-analyses, respectively. Then, a bubble plot was designed to visually display information in four dimensions.Results: A total of 354 RCTs and 17 SRs or meta-analyses met the inclusion criteria. The published RCTs had several flaws, such as unreasonable design, limited sample size, insufficient attention to non-drug therapy studies and syndrome differentiation, improper selection or use of outcome indicators, and failure to provide high-quality evidence. Sixteen SRs or meta-analyses of methodological quality scored “Critically Low” confidence. Twelve SRs or meta-analyses were rated as “High Risk.” Most outcomes were rated as “Low” evidence quality. We found that TCM combined with conventional treatment could improve the clinical total effective rate and the TCM syndromes efficacy. The combined approach could also shorten mechanical ventilation time, infection control time, and length of hospital and ICU stay; significantly reduce temperature, respiratory rate, heart rate, white blood cell counts, levels of C-reactive protein, procalcitonin, blood inflammatory factors, bacteriological response, and D-dimer; decrease CPIS, APACHE II score, and PSI score; improve pulmonary imaging features, arterial blood gas indicators (including arterial oxygen pressure, arterial oxygen saturation, and oxygen index), and lung function (including forced vital capacity and forced expiratory volume in the first second) for severe pneumonia compared with conventional treatment only (p < 0.05). There was no significant difference in adverse reactions and incidence of adverse events (p > 0.05). In addition, compared with conventional treatment only, most SRs or meta-analyses concluded that TCM combined with conventional treatment was “Beneficial” or “Probably beneficial.”Conclusion: TCM combined with conventional treatment had advantages in efficacy, clinical signs, laboratory results, and life quality outcomes of severe pneumonia, with no difference in safety outcomes compared with conventional treatment only. QingJin Huatan decoction is the most promising target, and Xuanbai Chengqi decoction has a “Probably beneficial” conclusion. XueBiJing injection and TanReQing injection are two commonly used Chinese herbal injections for treating severe pneumonia, and both are “Probably beneficial.” However, there was a need for multicenter RCTs with large sample sizes and high methodological quality in the future. In addition, the methodological design and quality of SRs or meta-analyses should be improved to form high-quality, evidence-based medical evidence and provide evidence for the effectiveness and safety of TCM adjuvant therapy for severe pneumonia.

This paper presents a fault-tolerant control (FTC) strategy to improve lateral stability and maneuverability of a four-wheel independently actuated (FWIA) electric ground vehicle with active front steering (AFS). Front wheel steering angle and external yaw moment generated by the tire force difference between the two sides of the motors are adopted to simultaneously regulate the vehicle yaw rate and slip angle. Considering the high cost of currently available sensors for vehicle slip angle measurement, a robust H_∞ dynamic output-feedback controller is designed to control the vehicle, which can be implemented without the slip angle or lateral speed measurement. Both vehicle parameter uncertainties and actuators faults are considered, making the proposed control method robust to the uncertainties and actuator faults. Simulation results based on full-vehicle model in Carsim validate the effectiveness of the proposed control approach.

This paper investigates the experimental study of differential steering control of a four-wheel independently driven (FWID) electric vehicle (EV) based on the steer-by-wire (SBW) system. As each wheel of FWID vehicle can be independently driven, differential steering is realized by applying different driven torques to the front-two wheels. Firstly, the principle of the differential steering is analyzed based on the SBW system. When the differential steering is activated, the driver’s steering request is sent to the vehicle’s ECU. Then, the ECU gives different control signals to the front-left and front-right wheels, generating an external steering force on the steering components. The external steering force pushes the steering components to turn corresponding to the driver’s request. Secondly, to test the feasibility of differential steering, a FWID EV is assembled and the vehicle is equipped with four independently driven in-wheel motors. The corresponding control system is designed. Finally, the field test of the vehicle based on the proposed differential steering control strategy is performed. In the experiment, the fixed yaw rate tracking and varied yaw rate tracking maneuvers are employed. In the fixed yaw rate tracking, the vehicle can track the desired yaw rate well with differential steering. In addition, the vehicle can track the varied yaw rate with proposed differential steering. The test results confirm the feasibility and effectiveness of the differential steering. By using the differential steering, a backup steering is established without additional components; thus, the costs can be reduced and the reliability of the vehicle steering system can be enhanced, significantly.