Program Complex Control FFI Board funded program 2014-12-15 Abstract This document describes a FFI board funded program to be run during four years with a proposed yearly public funding of 15 MSEK and at least 15 MSEK industry funding. It has been produced by a joint effort where the industry is represented mainly by the Swedish automotive OEMs AB Volvo, Volvo Cars and Scania and the academy and institutes by Chalmers, LiU, LTH, KTH and Viktoria Swedish ICT. Future vehicle features will be based on control engineering technology to a large extent and the increasing amount of control functions and use of advanced methods result in a growing complexity. The aim of the program is to manage this complexity and to facilitate the introduction of more intelligent and advanced control functions in products creating a competitive advantage for the Swedish automotive industry.
1. Background On the road towards fossil independent transports with no accidents, vehicles get increasingly intelligent. The intelligence consists of functions implemented in software executing on electronic devices to control the behaviour of the vehicle. To a large extent, functions related to vehicle motion and energy management are based on methods and concepts within Control Engineering and optimisation which constitutes the foundation for the Complex Control program. Over time, the amount of control functions has grown drastically and will continue to do so. Originally introduced for fuel injection and ignition control to lower NOx, HC and CO emissions more functions such as cruise control and active safety have been added. With higher requirements on energy efficiency and automated operation, more advanced methods will be required. Adding the variability in vehicle applications such as person transport, long haul transport of frozen food, city distribution, construction transport of concrete, landfill or sand, each requiring unique features, the result is indeed a complex system of control functions. Traditionally, new control functions have been introduced in an incremental, uncoordinated way without a holistic view resulting in unexpected behaviour when being integrated into the complete vehicle. To address this issue and break the trend with delayed market introductions and increased development cost, a structured way of integrating functions and a systems engineering approach with virtual verification is required, c.f. Figure 1. The vehicle manufacturers who succeed to manage this complexity in an efficient way will have a competitive advantage. Figure 1. Why Complex Control. Typical application examples of complex control are hybrid electric vehicles and plugin hybrid electric vehicles where the torque split between the combustion engine and electric machine as well as the planned stops for charging needs to be optimised from an energy efficiency point of view. Another
example is the on-going introduction of semi-automatic and fully automatic vehicles which certainly requires more extensive sensor fusion and control technologies. 2. Program objectives Common for all FFI initiatives is the expected positive impact on energy efficient and safe vehicles and transport solutions. Complex control systems are one of the major ingredients to realise this. The program aims to develop methodology and platforms that facilitate the introduction of more intelligent and advanced control functions in products in order to meet future demands on energy efficiency and automated vehicle operation. The developed methods and platforms will be applied to selected vehicle functions and demonstrated in virtual environments or real demonstrators. Mission: Develop Develop new control engineering technology enabling energy efficient and safe vehicles. Vision: Improved energy efficiency and safety in products and a more efficient development process for both advanced engineering and product development Goal: More mature control function related technology measured with TRL for selected applications Project selection criteria: Clear contributions to the platform supporting advanced control development 3. Program scope The Complex Control program spans over four areas: Modular function architecture Combined control engineering and systems engineering development Environment for virtual development, simulation and verification Information architecture Each of them is described more in detail below. Together, they can be regarded as a platform for complex control being used in applications at different levels from sub systems to transport functions. C.f. Figure 2.
Figure 2. Complex Control platform. Vertical boxes are innovation areas that contribute to the platform. Horizontal boxes indicate control functions (with some examples) on different system levels from low level vehicle sub system control to highest level including the complete transport system. Note that the Complex Control program does not cover the electronics, software and physical hardware domains represented by white boxes in Figure 3... These areas are currently covered by other FFI programs such as EMK-Electronics, Software & Communication. Furthermore, the interface to the environment and driver should be developed within the program but technology for maps, V2X communication etc. is essentially developed elsewhere. Figure 3. Complex Control scope. Grey boxes indicate the areas within the scope.
Modular function architecture Efficient integration of control functions assumes structures, generic design principles and patterns guiding the development and evolution in a product line approach. The control function architecture defines the structure and provides a common framework for vehicle motion control, energy and power management. Some Research & Innovation topics could be: State-of-art investigation: reference model architectures and layered architectures for military defence, aero/space and process automation (Research) Establish main principles and guidelines for a vehicle control function architecture (TRL 2) Apply to existing vehicle control functions and demonstrate (TRL 3-5) Develop and integrate new function (TRL 5-6) Combined control engineering and systems engineering development The aim is to have a coherent methodology for control systems development allowing improved vehicle features and shortened development time. More advanced methods such as multivariable control, optimal control and model based calibration are quite rarely used in the automotive industry today but have been used in other domains since long. With the increasing computational power onboard and communication possibilities external to the vehicle this is now a foreseeable development. Fault tolerance and robustness are important properties of control systems. Systems engineering methods need to be applied to a greater extent to achieve a more efficient development process of control functions and its realisation into embedded software. Examples of possible Research & Innovation topics: State-of-art investigation: systems engineering process applied to industrial control and embedded systems development (Research) Embedded optimization software components (TRL 2-3) Applied advanced control development and system identification for model based control (TRL 2) Applied robust and fault tolerant control methodology (TRL 2-3) Applied signal processing, state estimation and sensor fusion for advanced control (TRL 2) Virtual development of new functions (TRL 3-4) Integrate and demonstrate new functions (TRL 5-6) Environment for virtual development, simulation and verification With accurate models of the system to be controlled and efficient tools for control function development, a considerable amount of physical testing can be made virtual. The result will be faster and cheaper development but also a better understanding of the system behaviour. The target is a complete tool support for model based development demonstrated in different applications. Examples of Research & Innovation topics: System structural modelling and behavioural modelling (TRL 2-4) Effective use of model based development in distributed organizations System and control design optimization tools (TRL 2-4)
Verification of fault tolerance (TRL 2-4) Application of formal verification tools (TRL 4-6) Simulation based regulations (simulation to verify legal demands as a complement to testing) (TRL 4-8) Information architecture To enable further enhancement of optimization both related to energy efficiency, safety and traffic system capacity it is of interest to utilise information created outside the vehicles. This represents an area of research related to how to manage quality, reliability and accessibility of this information in cooperation between information suppliers, commercial or authority, and OEM. There are also challenges how to provide robust functionality able to cope with situations where this information is not available or declared uncertain. As a general item there is a need to define potentials with this type of controls including stakeholders and their drivers. 4. Program budget and application process The Complex Control program will run for four years, 2015-2019, with a proposed yearly budget of 15 MSEK in public funding. The industrial parties commit to an equally large funding which creates a total program budget of 120 MSEK for the full period of four years. The project application process is according to the established FFI procedures.