Search Results

A Light Detection And Ranging (LiDAR) is now becoming an essential sensor for an autonomous vehicle. The LiDAR provides the surrounding environment information of the vehicle in the form of a point cloud. A decision-making system of the autonomous car is able to determine a safe and comfort maneuver by utilizing the detected LiDAR point cloud. The LiDAR points on the cloud are classified as dynamic or static class depending on the movement of the object being detected. If the movement class (dynamic or static) of detected points can be provided by LiDAR, the decision-making system is able to plan the appropriate motion of the autonomous vehicle according to the movement of the object. This paper proposes a real-time process to segment the motion states of LiDAR points. The basic principle of the classification algorithm is to classify the point-wise movement of a target point cloud through the other point clouds and sensor poses.

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.

In CRDI diesel engines, the piezo injector is gradually replacing the solenoid injector due to the quick response of the actuator. Operating performance of the injectors in the CRDI diesel engine has an influence on engine emissions. Therefore, accurate injector control is one of the most important parts of the CRDI engine control. The objective of this paper is the development of a piezo injector driver for CRDI diesel engines. Electrical characteristics of the piezo injector were analyzed. A control strategy for charging and discharging the actuator are proposed. The developed injector driver is verified by experiments under various fuel pressures, injection durations and driving circuit voltages.

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.

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.

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.

A controller is introduced for air-to-fuel ratio management, and the control scheme is based on the feedback error learning method. The controller consists of neural networks with linear feedback controller. The neural networks are radial basis function network (RBFN) that are trained by using the feedback error learning method, and the air-to-fuel ratio is measured from the wide-band oxygen sensor. Because the RBFNs are trained by online manner, the controller has adaptation capability, accordingly do not require the calibration effort. The performance of the controller is examined through experiments in transient operation with the engine-dynamometer.

The electrical power system is the vital lifeline to most of the control systems on modern vehicles. The demands on the system are highly complex, and a detailed understanding of the system behavior is necessary both to the process of systems integration and to the economic design of a specific control system or actuator. The vehicle electric power system, which consists of two major components: a generator and a battery, has to provide numerous electrical and electronic systems with enough electrical energy. 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. An easy-to-use and inexpensive simulation program may be needed to avoid the over/under design problem of the electric power system. A vehicle electric power simulator is developed in this study.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and experimentally validate a practical and effective technique for the automatic regulation of a hydraulic semiactive vibration absorber (SAVA) for automobiles. The work relies on a consistent hydraulic model of the actuator dynamics that includes the effects of fluid compressibility and a nonlinear viscous loss characteristic. A bistate control algorithm is developed using a Lyapunov approach that seeks to dissipate the energy of the system. The performance of the proposed semiactive damper design on a quarter car model of an automobile suspension is established experimentally on a vibrating test stand. The work provides evidence that the inexpensive hardware design makes it possible to improve the ride and handling performance.

In order to evaluate vehicle powertrain performances and driver behaviors, a computer aided in-vehicle data acquisition system named MOde Survey System (MOSS) is newly developed in conjunction with a motor manufacturer. MOSS is designed to be used by personnel related to vehicle emissions and energy with the aim of being cost-effective and easy-to-use. Since driving behaviors and patterns influence powertrain performance in terms of fuel economy and emissions, engineers can utilize the system for understanding the driving pattern and traffic situation quantitatively. MOSS mainly consists of an MCU-based hardware and PC-based software. MOSS logs and analyzes various data related to vehicle driving. Compared to currently-existing Test and Measurement Systems, MOSS is designed and developed for a specific goal with several unique features.