Automotive Control Systems Laboratory
A major effort for many years has involved the study of the
two principal control facets of transportation systems: a microscopic aspect
which relates to each individual vehicle, and a macroscopic aspect which
relates to overall network operations. Laboratory work has included the
development of sensors, the design and development of controllers for vehicle
longitudinal and lateral control, and field evaluations of designs. Recent
work involves active suspension control design, studies on hierarchy issues
within individual vehicles coupling steering, braking, and suspension. Other
work has focused on modeling and self-tuning control issues relative to
Anti-Lock Brake systems for conventional and electronic brake systems. Laboratory
hardware consisting of actual electronic brake hardware, in production for
GM cars, and TI DSP processor-based controllers allows hybrid simulation
of the braking system and vehicle dynamics. We have recently established
a test bed for continuously variable transmission control. The OSU Autonomous
Car, supported through the Center
for Intelligent Transportation Research, (CITR) is a testbed for control
algorithms and sensor integration. Please see the CITR web page for more
details on our research in intelligent transportation systems. Please see
below for some information on a few of our automotive control system experiments.
Typically students do research on such automotive control system problems
after taking at least one of our laboratory courses: EE
757 Control Laboratory I or EE 758 Control Laboratory
II.
The FOSU Network
The FOrd OSU Control Network is an experimental facility for investigating
issues related to real time implementation of control algorithms on a distributed
network. The hardware for the network has been supplied by Ford Motor Company
and provides a multitude of experimental possibilities. A number of PC's
are supported and each can accomplish real-time control, either independently
or sharing data across the network. The network itself can be loaded with
traffic to emulate multiple users and delays.
Control of Braking Systems
Benchtop brake system control experiment:
Field Tests of Brake Control System and the Transportation Research Center,
East Liberty Ohio:
Electric Vehicle Research / Industrial Controls Research
Continuously Variable Transmissions: In this project a testbed is
being developed for evaluation of controllers for a continuously variable
transmission. The testbed consists of a DC motor for a drive, an electronically
actuated pulley system, and a dynomometer for a load. We are also going
to develop a testbed that uses a hydrostatic speed variator as the transmission.
Control of Switched Reluctance Motors: We have been studying the
modeling, simulation, identification, and control of a switched reluctance
motor. The control studies focus on torque ripple reduction. The experiment
is a small-scale testbed for evaluating the possibility of using switched
reluctance motors for electric vehicles.
This page is still under construction.