In chassis development, the three aspects of safety, vehicle dynamics and ride comfort are at the top of the list of challenges to be faced. Addressing this triad of challenges becomes even more complex when the chassis is required to interact with assistance systems and other systems for fully automated driving. What is more, new demands are created by the introduction of modern electric and electronic architectures. All these requirements must be met by the chassis, together with its subsystems, the steering, brakes, tires and wheels. At the same time, all physical relationships and interactions have to be taken into account.

The increasing automation of driving functions and the electrification of powertrains present new challenges for the chassis with regard to complexity, redundancy, data security,and installation space. At the same time, the mobility of the future will also require entirely new vehicle concepts, particularly in urban areas. The intelligent chassis must be connected, electrified, and automated in order to be best prepared for this future.

By forming the link between the road surface and the vehicle, the chassis plays a key role in enhancing vehicle dynamics and ride comfort. With its control systems, it provides the basis for the further development of driver assistance systems which support the driver in the task ofdriving the vehicle. This applies to an even greater extent to autonomous vehicles. Electromechanical steering and steerby-wire systems are one solution available. At the sametime, the brake system as a safety component needs to be developed in such a way that it fulfills the requirements of powertrain hybridization and electrification.

You can find in this book the development of highly and fully automatic driving and the increasing electrification of the powertrain now face chassis development with new challenges too. Innovative chassis systems have to provide solutions for automated driving. The efficient chassis of the future also has to keep an eye on CO2 targets, comfort and customer focus at all times. A modern chassis has to provide for this in the form of innovations while taking the physical and mechanical interdependencies into account. Confronting these new developments is a challenge for simulation and testing.

The AVEC symposium is a leading international conference in the fields of vehicle dynamics and advanced vehicle control, bringing together scientists and engineers from academia and automotive industry. The first symposium was held in 1992 in Yokohama, Japan. Since then, biennial AVEC symposia have been established internationally and have considerably contributed to the progress of technology in automotive research and development. In 2016 the 13th International Symposium on Advanced Vehicle Control (AVEC’16) was held in Munich, Germany, from 13th to 16th of September 2016. The symposium was hosted by the Munich University of Applied Sciences. AVEC’16 puts a special focus on automatic driving, autonomous driving functions and driver assist systems, integrated control of interacting control systems, controlled suspension systems, active wheel torque distribution, and vehicle state and parameter estimation. 132 papers were presented at the symposium and are published in these proceedings as full paper contributions. The papers review the latest research developments and practical applications in highly relevant areas of vehicle control, and may serve as a reference for researchers and engineers.