Comfort-Oriented Pothole Traversal Using Multi-Sensor Perception and Fuzzy Control

Potholes are typical negative road obstacles that can significantly compromise vehicle safety and ride comfort when traversed at inappropriate speeds. To address this issue, this paper proposes a pothole-detection-based, comfort-oriented pothole traversal algorithm that integrates multi-sensor fusion perception, comfort-constrained speed planning, and fuzzy control. A camera and a single-point ranging LiDAR are first fused to extract key geometric features of potholes, including contour, area, and depth. Based on these features, a vehicle-pothole dynamic model is developed in ADAMS to quantify the influence of pothole area and depth on vehicle vertical vibration. The vertical frequency-weighted root-mean-square (RMS) acceleration is adopted as the ride comfort indicator, based on which the maximum allowable traversal speed under different pothole geometries is determined. Furthermore, a longitudinal pothole traversal control strategy based on fuzzy theory is designed to regulate vehicle acceleration, enabling the vehicle to reach the comfort-constrained limiting speed within a finite preview distance while ensuring braking safety. The proposed method is validated through multi-scenario co-simulations using MATLAB/Simulink and CarSim, as well as real-vehicle experiments. Results demonstrate that the proposed strategy can effectively adjust vehicle speed before pothole traversal, satisfying comfort constraints and improving ride comfort without sacrificing driving safety.