Real-time multi-body formulation for virtual-reality-based design and evaluation of automobile controllers

摘要

Nowadays, modelling and simulation of vehicle dynamics play a great role in the design and evaluation of vehicle control systems, as they reduce costly and time-consuming construction of prototypes and experimentation. Multi-body simulation can be used for controller design, tuning and testing of electronic control units, optimum control, or onboard devices providing driver advice and/or actuation.This article reports on the application of a robust real-time formulation to the development of a low-cost and efficient computational framework for the design and evaluation of automobile motion controllers. The core elements of the tool are the real-time formalism for the dynamics of multi-body systems, a virtual-reality (VR) interface for human-in-the-loop simulation, and Matlab for the controllers.A detailed model of an existing prototype car has been implemented in the Fortran language, and controllers have been designed for several purposes, in order to test the developed framework. It has been demonstrated that the dynamic formalism is fast enough to enable human-in-the-loop simulation, that the VR interface is of great help for both control design and evaluation, and that Matlab algorithms can be efficiently connected to the Fortran computational model of the car.