Vehicle motion control apparatus

A vehicle motion control apparatus comprising:

• an operated state detecting unit which detects an operated state quantity of a vehicle given by a driver;
• a motion state detecting unit which detects a motion state quantity of the vehicle, the motion state detecting unit including at least a lateral acceleration sensor which detects a lateral acceleration and a yaw rate sensor which detects an actual yaw rate;
• a reference attitude-state quantity calculation unit which calculates a reference attitude-state quantity corresponding to the operated state quantity of the vehicle and the motion state quantity of the vehicle based on a motion model of the vehicle which is a model for the vehicle under the condition in which an external force is applied to the vehicle;
• an actual attitude state determining unit which determines an actual attitude-state quantity of the vehicle based on detection signals of the operated state detecting unit and the motion state detecting unit;
• an attitude-state quantity difference calculation unit which calculates a difference between the reference attitude-state quantity of the vehicle and the actual attitude-state quantity of the vehicle;
• a virtual external force calculation unit which corrects the external force based on the difference calculated in the attitude-state quantity difference calculation unit and feedbacks the corrected external force to the reference attitude-state quantity calculation unit;
• an actuator control unit which determines a target control amount of an actuator which generates a vehicle motion;
• a vehicle slip angle velocity calculation unit which calculates a vehicle slip angle velocity based on the lateral acceleration and the actual yaw rate;
• a first control target yaw moment calculation unit which determines a first control target yaw moment based on the actual attitude-state quantity of the vehicle;
• a second control target yaw moment calculation unit which determines a second control target yaw moment based on the vehicle slip angle velocity;
• wherein
• a higher value selection unit which compares the first control target yaw moment with the second control target yaw moment and selects a higher value of the first control target yaw moment and the second control target yaw moment, and outputs the selected value to the actuator control unit;
• and
• the actuator control unit determines the control target amount of the actuator based on the higher value of the first and the second control target yaw moments selected by the higher value selection unit.