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Recently, there has been many practical applications of fuzzy control. Applications of fuzzy control to vehicles are more effective. However, they require more input and output channels as well as higher speed inference ability than typical applications require. We have developed a tool for developing a fuzzy control system available on a vehicle. The tool consists of a fuzzy inference board and a laptop personal computer with a color display executing a user interface software. The fuzzy inference board can be directly connected with an electronic control unit for vehicle control, and has 10 input channels, 5 output channels and 256 rules. The user interface software mainly provides two functions: 1) The screen editor for membership functions and rules. 2) The real-time monitor for input, output, and grade values when fuzzy inference is executed.

Recently, active control technology of vehicles has extensively been developed. An experimental vehicle with independent hydro-pneumatic suspensions was constructed in our laboratory for the improvements in vehicle dynamics and ride-comfort. The vehicle includes a controller, mainly consisting of a multi-processor system with 5 CPUs. By combining this new system with a common bus, all CPUs can immediately access peripherals impartially without particular software. The CPUs can also acquire the data of sensors from the memory in the A/D module at any time without special software. The CPUs are shared to synthetically control the attitude and vibration of each vehicle wheel. Therefore, high capacity is exhibited by a simple system at low cost. The performance of the controller was examined by actual running tests using the experimental vehicle, confirming the improvements in vehicle dynamics and ride-comfort, such as reduction in roll angle and vibration.