Search Results

Human drivers navigate by continuously predicting the intent of road users and interacting with them. For safe autonomous driving, research about predicting future trajectory of vehicles and motion planning based on these predictions has drawn attention in recent years. Most of these studies, however, did not take into account driver’s intentions or any interdependence with other vehicles. In order to drive safely in real complex driving situations, it is essential to plan a path based on other driver’s intentions and simultaneously to estimate the intentions of other road user with different characteristics as human drivers do. We aim to tackle the above challenges on highway merge scenario where the intention of other road users should be understood. In this study, we propose an intention aware motion planning method using finite state machine and model predictive control without any vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) or vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications.

With fuel efficiency becoming an increasingly critical aspect of internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles, the necessity for research on efficient generation of electric energy has been growing. An energy management (EM) system controls the generation of electric energy using an alternator. This paper presents a strategy for the EM using a control mode switch (CMS) of the alternator for the (ICE) vehicles. This EM recovers the vehicle’s residual kinetic energy to improve the fuel efficiency. The residual kinetic energy occurs when a driver manipulates a vehicle to decelerate. The residual energy is commonly wasted as heat energy of the brake. In such circumstances, the wasted energy can be converted to electric energy by operating an alternator. This conversion can reduce additional fuel consumption. For extended application of the energy conversion, the future duration time of the residual power is exploited. The duration time is derived from the vehicle’s future speed profile.

In electronic vehicles (EVs) or hybrid electronic vehicles (HEVs), an inverter system has a direct-current-link capacitor (DC-link capacitor) which provides reactive power, attenuates ripple current, reduces the emission of electromagnetic interference, and suppresses voltage spikes. A film capacitor has been used as the DC-link capacitor in high level power system, but the film capacitor's performance has deteriorated over operating time. The decreasing performance of the film capacitor may cause a problem when supplying and delivering energy from the battery to the vehicle's power system. Therefore, the lifetime prediction of the film capacitor could be one of critical factors in the EVs and HEVs. For this reason, the lifetime and reliability of the film capacitor are key factors to show the stability of the vehicle inverter system. There are a lot of methods to predict the lifetime of the film capacitor.

Under the present effort to decrease of air pollution, Electric Vehicles (EVs) are appeared and developed. EVs are running by using electrical energy resource by supporting of battery packs. The effect of air-conditioning has proven to be a serious problem to the point of battery depleting. Thus in the present study, effects of air conditioning (i.e., cooling and heating) on driving range were studied for various driving modes including UDDS, HWFET, and NEDC. The result shows that EV energy efficiency is opposing the usual trend of internal combustion engine vehicle's fuel consumption in highway driving mode than urban driving mode. In highway mode, EV energy efficiency and driving range also decease than urban driving mode. This status was influenced on motor characteristic which torque decrease in high speed rotating conditions and highway driving mode consist of constant speed velocity so it couldn't use the regenerative braking system effectively.

Electro-Mechanical Brake (EMB) systems can provide improved braking and stability functions such as ABS, EBD, TCS, ESC, BA, ACC, etc. For the implementation of the EMB systems, reliable and robust fault detection algorithm is required. In this study, a model-based fault detection algorithm is designed based on the analytical redundancy method in order to monitor possible faults in EMB systems. The performance of the proposed model-based fault detection algorithm is verified in simulations. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is demonstrated in various faulty cases.

An efficient development environments such as Software-in-the-Loop Simulation (SILS) and Rapid Control Prototyping (RCP) have been widely used to reduce the development time and cost of real-time ECUs. However, conventional SILS does not consider temporal behaviors caused by computation time, task scheduling, network-induced delays, and so on. As a result, the control performance of ECU is likely to be degraded after implementation. To overcome this problem, SILS/RCP which considers the temporal behaviors was suggested in the previous research. In this study, we validated the proposed SILS/RCP environments which are used to design an Electronic Stability Control (ESC) system which is one of the hard real-time control systems. The proposed SILS/RCP environments make it possible to realize ECUs in the early design phase by considering temporal behaviors.

FlexRay is a deterministic and fault-tolerant in-vehicle network(IVN) protocol. It is expected to become a practical standard for automotive communication systems. According to the FlexRay protocol specifications, there are about 60 configurable parameters which should be determined in the design phases. The parameters increase the complexities of FlexRay-based control system development. In this study, we are suggesting a formal design process for FlexRay-based control systems, which is focused on network parameter optimization. We introduce design phases from functional system models to implementations. These phases present formal ways for task allocation, node assignment, network configuration, and implementations. In the network configuration phase, two FlexRay core parameters are selected to optimize network design. Optimal methods of the core parameters provide concise guide lines for optimal communication cycle length and optimal static slot length.

Electromechanical relays that are coupled with fuses have been used for controlling electrical loads in vehicles. In the past decade, semiconductor power switches have been developed for overcoming the physical limits of relays and fuses. Semiconductor power switches can not only replace relays and fuses but can also improve a system's reliability and efficiency. In this study, we introduce the Smart Automotive Switch (SAS), which is a smart high side power switch of Fairchild Korea semiconductor. Functional capabilities, such as power switching, protection and self-diagnosis of SASs are presented in case studies involving, for example, headlights, glow plugs, and fuel pump control systems. Through these experimental studies, the suitability of SASs is validated for designing improved automotive electronic control systems.

A fault detection method with parity equations is proposed in this paper. Due to low cost implementation, the velocity of a motor is not measurable in EPB systems. Therefore, residuals are not reliable with a low resolution encoder to estimate the motor velocity. In this paper, we propose a fault detection method with sensorless estimation using current ripples. The method estimates position and velocity of the motor by detecting periodical oscillations of the armature current caused by rotor slots. This method could estimate position and velocity of the motor with less computational effort than a state observer. Moreover, the method is less sensitive to motor parameters than model-based estimation methods. The effectiveness of this method is validated with experimental data. The simulation results show that various faults have their own residual patterns. Therefore, we could detect the fault by monitoring the residual signals.

This paper presents a model based sensor fault detection and isolation algorithm for the vertical acceleration sensors of the Continuous Damping Control (CDC) system, installed on the sprung mass. Since sensor faults of CDC system have a critical influence on the ride performance as well as the vehicle stability, the sensor fault detection algorithm must be implemented into the overall CDC algorithm. In this paper, each vertical acceleration sensor installed on the sprung mass (two in the front corners and one in the rear) separately estimates the vertical acceleration of the center of gravity of the sprung mass. Then, the sensor fault is detected by cross-checking all three vertical acceleration estimates independently obtained by the each vertical acceleration sensor.

This paper presents the Matlab/Simulink-based Software-in-the-Loop Simulation (SILS) tool which is the co-simulator for temporal and functional simulations of control systems. The temporal behavior of a control system is mainly dependent on the implemented software and hardware such as the real-time operating system, target CPU and communication protocol. In this research, the SILS components with temporal attributes are specified as tasks, task executions, real-time schedulers, and real-time networks. Methods for realizing these components in graphical block representations are investigated with Matlab/Simulink, which is the most commonly used tool for designing and simulating control algorithms in control engineering. These components are modeled in graphical blocks of Matlab/Simulink.

This paper presents a preliminary study of a sampling period decision for robust control of a distributed control system based on an in-vehicle network with three types of data (real-time synchronous data, real-time asynchronous data, and nonreal-time asynchronous data). The architecture of automotive systems is currently changing from a number of standalone electronic control units (ECUs) to a functionally integrated distributed system which is linked by a network. The control performance of the integrated networked control system can be changed by the characteristics of time delays among the application ECUs. A basic parameter for a scheduling method of the networked control systems, a maximum allowable delay bound is used, which guarantees stability of the networked control system, and it is derived from the characteristics of the given plant using presented theorems.

The electric power system of a modern vehicle has to supply enough electrical energy to numerous electrical and electronic systems. The electric power system of a vehicle consists of two major components: a generator and a battery. A detailed understanding of the characteristics of the electric power system, electrical load demands, and the driving environment such as road, season, and vehicle weight are required when the capacities of the generator and the battery are to be determined for a vehicle. In order to avoid the over/under design problem of the electric power system, an easy-to-use and inexpensive simulation program may be needed. In this study, a vehicle electric power simulator is developed. The simulator can be utilized to determine the optimized capacities of generators and batteries appropriately. To improve the flexibility and easy usage of the simulation program, the program is organized in modular structures, and is run on a PC.