Adaptive Cruise-Control Testbed

With support from the Leverhulme Trust, ESL staff are currently involved in the creation of an adaptive cruise-control testbed.

This is an open-source testbed, and full details of the design and implementation are being released through this WWW site, by means of a series of technical reports. Together these reports describe a complete hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulation that reproduces the behaviour of a passenger car travelling down a motorway. In the simulation, the speed and position of the car are determined by an adaptive cruise control system implemented using one or more embedded microcontrollers.

The test bed is intended to be used to assess and compare different software architectures for use in distributed embedded systems, particularly those for which high reliability is a key design consideration.

The first three technical reports are now available. Details are provided below.

Three further reports will be released in May 2005.  

The current version of a simple cruise control system (CCS) testbed is described on this page.

ACCS Publications

Short, M, Pont, M.J. and Huang, Q. (2004) "ACCS Testbed 1.0: Simulation of Vehicle Longitudinal Dynamics".

Abstract

This document describes the development of a model of the longitudinal dynamics of a passenger car. The model described here provides a suitably detailed description of a 'host vehicle', which is controlled by a distributed embedded system in a hardware-in-the-loop real-time test facility.

Short, M., Pont, M.J. and Huang, Q. (2004) "ACCS Testbed 1.0: Simulation of Motorway Traffic Flows".

Abstract

This report describes the development of a computer simulation of traffic flow on a typical section of motorway in the UK. First a brief description of the motorway network itself is given, along with a discussion of UK driving conventions. Following this, the principle of microscopic simulation and the representation of road users are discussed. Drive models for both car following and lane changing are then developed. The microscopic parameters in the driver models are then optimised to fir the simulation results with existing empirical data.

Short, M., Pont, M.J. and Huang, Q. (2004) "ACCS Testbed 1.0: Development of a Hardware-in-the-Loop Test Facility for Automotive ACC Implementations".

Abstract

This report describes the development of a PC_based, Hardware-IN-THe_Loop (HIL) test facility for the evaluation of embedded automotive control system design. The report begins by explaining the principles of Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) and exploring hoe the work reported in previous technical reports in this series is integrated into the overall simulation. Following this , the hardware interface to the embedded system is described, along with the techniques that were used to generate a suitable timing resource for implementation in a DOS-based environment. The next section details how the various system sensor and actuators may be simulated in a realistic manner. The report then concludes with a description of a suitable software architecture, bringing together each of the required elements. The simulation is coded entirely in C, with reference to certain functions on the text.

Short, M., Pont, M.J. and Fang, J. (2005) "Control Technologies For Automotive Drive-By-Wire Applications".

ESL Technical Report ESL04/04 (Working Title, available shortly).

Short, M., Pont, M.J. and Fang, J. (2005) "Drive-By-Wire ACC System: Technical Specification".

ESL Technical Report ESL04/05 (Working Title, available shortly).

Short, M., Pont, M.J. and Fang, J.(2005) "10-Node Distributed ACC System: Co-Operative Implementation".

ESL Technical Report ESL04/06 (Working Title, available shortly).

Author: S A Key, last updated 16/11/2004. Best viewed on 1024 x 768.
This document has been approved by the Head of Department.