Research Article

Advances in Mechanical Engineering

2019, Vol. 11(2) 1–17
Ó The Author(s) 2019
Design of vehicle control research and DOI: 10.1177/1687814019826427
journals.sagepub.com/home/ade
development platform for a pure
electric vehicle

Ying Zhao , Jinsen Hou, Chong Wang, Linlin Chen and Qun Sun

Abstract
A design of a pure electric vehicle controller research and development platform is presented in this article. Based on a
Freescale MC9S12XDP512 microcontroller with several I/O ports, the hardware of the controller together with a con-
troller area network communication interface to coordinate functionalities of each vehicle module is designed. The con-
trol strategy is modeled and verified by MATLAB/Simulink and AVL.Cruise softwares. The calibration of parameters is
verified by a 55 kW dynamometer machine with different test scenarios. Besides, comprehensive experiments are per-
formed and the results are obtained using the platform.

Keywords
Pure electric vehicle, vehicle controller unit, control strategy, controller area network communication, dynamometer
machine

Date received: 9 October 2018; accepted: 4 January 2019

Handling Editor: Yanjun Huang

Introduction control technology, and lithium battery technology. As

we all know, the vehicle control unit (VCU) is the core
Due to the pressure of energy shortage and environ- component of an electric vehicle control system.3 More
mental pollution, new energy vehicles have attracted importantly, the motor control system signal, the accel-
rapidly increasing attention in recent years.1,2 As one eration pedal signal, the brake pedal signal, and signals
type of the new energy vehicles, pure electric vehicle has of other parts are first collected by VCU, which will
developed most rapidly. For example, Japan launched analyze the driver’s intention and make corresponding
the first pure electric car Leaf in 2010, with excellent judgment. Then, to coordinate the movement of vari-
appearance design and long continuous mileage after ous power components and protect normal driving of
charging once. At the 2011 Shanghai Auto Show, the electric vehicles, the required motor output torque and
Changan BenBen MINI pure electric car with lithium other parameters are calculated.4–6 Moreover, the
battery is presented, which can provide maximum speed
structure of the electric vehicle will have an impact on
of 120 km/h and continuous mileage can be reached to
l50 km after one charge. In addition, the ferric phos-
phate batteries are employed by BYD e6. The standard School of Mechanical and Automotive Engineering, Liaocheng University,
charging time of it is 6 h, which can provide the maxi- Liaocheng, China
mum speed of 160 km/h and continuous mileage of
300 km. Corresponding author:
Ying Zhao, School of Mechanical and Automotive Engineering, Liaocheng
At present, four key technologies of pure electric University, 1 Hunan Road, Dongchangfu District, Liaocheng 252059,
vehicle research are investigated, including vehicle con- Shandong, China.
troller, energy management system, motor drive Email: zhaoying008zy@163.com

Creative Commons CC BY: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
(http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without
further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/
open-access-at-sage).
2 Advances in Mechanical Engineering

the movement of vehicles. Qin et al.7 proposed a new vehicle controller technologies can benefit a wide vari-
approach for vibration mitigation based on a dynamic ety of electric vehicle models and products in the
vibration absorbing structure for electric vehicles. Tang domestic market.
et al.8,9 proposed motor torque control methods to sup-
press the vibration of a dual-motor hybrid powertrain
during start-stop operation. For the energy manage- Overall design scheme
ment, the energy control strategies such as equivalent
The vehicle controller receives the operation informa-
consumption minimization strategy (ECMS),
tion from the driver, such as the accelerator pedal, the
Pontryagin’s minimum principle (PMP), and model
brake pedal, and the shift lever signals, and then the
predictive control (MPC) strategy are widely used in
driver’s intention and the corresponding operation are
the hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs),10–13 while the pure
determined based on the information. When the vehicle
electric vehicles are used less. However, the higher
is running, the vehicle output torque and the vehicle
energy efficiency of pure electric vehicle can be
status are sent to the motor control unit. When the
achieved by regenerative braking energy recovery.14 At
vehicle is started and stopped, the high and low voltage
the mean time of completion of energy and power con-
trol, it also monitors the actions of the lower level com- power, which is supplied by the external related equip-
ponents of the controller and provides the key ment, is controlled to turn on and off in sequence. The
functions of normal driving for the battery energy and start and running state of the motor controller and
braking energy feedback, network management, fault power management system are controlled to meet the
diagnosis and processing, and vehicle status monitor- vehicle control needs. To coordinate the working status
ing.15,16 For example, Van Mierlo and Maggetto15 pro- of each module, the vehicle controller is communicated
posed a recognition model to estimate the distance with other control units by the CAN (controller area
directly by training a deep neural network. In Guo network).
et al.,16 a novel control system of electric vehicles is The vehicle control system is shown in Figure 1,
proposed, which has been validated by the simulation which consists of vehicle controller, motor and motor
and experimental tests. controller, power battery, power battery management
The current research on vehicle controller is mainly system (BMS), fault diagnosis management unit, gear-
focused on regenerative braking control, traction force box, main reducer, auxiliary system, and other compo-
control, and so on. Although overseas vehicle control- nents. The auxiliary system includes steering motor and
lers are often produced by large automobile enterprises its controller, air conditioning motor and its controller,
with advanced technologies, they are mainly used for braking system, DC/DC, and so on. The battery is the
complex four-wheel drive and wheel motor drive pure power source of the whole vehicle and provides power
electric vehicles. For example, the vehicle controller of for all the equipment. The driver achieves the overall
Toyota mainly receives the driver’s operation signal control of the vehicle through the vehicle control
and the motion sensor signal. Then, it calculates these system.
signals by the control strategy and drives the left rear The CAN network topology is widely used in vehicle
wheel and the right rear wheel, respectively, through controls and can be shown in Figure 2, where the sys-
the left and right sets of motor controllers and inver- tem consists of two communication channels. Channel
ters.17 The vehicle controller of Nissan LEAF receives 1 is a high-speed CAN bus and channel 2 is a low-speed
electronic signals from the speed sensor and accelera- CAN bus. For power system components with high
tion pedal position sensor of the combination instru- real-time requirements, such as motor controller, BMS,
ment and controls the motor, generator, power cell, fault diagnosis system, and on-board charger, high-
solar cell, and regenerative braking system through the speed CAN bus connection is adopted, and the commu-
sub-controller.17 For single motor-driven pure electric nication rate can be up to 500 kbps. Low-speed CAN
vehicles, the functions are usually achieved by the bus is employed for the acquisition and feedback of
motor controller instead of vehicle controller. The cur- control signals with low real-time requirements in the
rent domestic studies on vehicle controllers are mostly vehicle, such as air conditioning, combination instru-
still in the experimental stage and achieve the hardware ment, cooling system, and vacuum booster pump brake
structure foundation preliminarily for vehicle controller system, and the communication rate can reach up to
development.18,19 In the domestic market, a few univer- 100 kbps. The fault diagnosis management unit is built
sities, such as Tsinghua University, Tianjin University, on the high-speed CAN bus, which is responsible for
and Beijing Institute of Technology, and other individ- the storage of vehicle fault information, the control of
ual enterprises have accomplished small quantities of fault signal lamp, and the information interaction with
production and managed sale of pure electric vehicle non-vehicle diagnostic instrument. As a high-voltage
controller products. Establishing a research and devel- safety management subsystem, the unit is responsible
opment platform to investigate more cost-effective for the state monitoring of high-voltage circuit (contact
Zhao et al. 3

Figure 1. The structure of the vehicle control system.

Figure 2. CAN network topology.

resistance, insulation, pre-charging process, and main 1. Accelerator pedal signal. Based on the different
contactor), as well as the driving management of pre- degrees of the accelerator pedal, the vehicle con-
charging relay and main contactor. troller is used to calculate the whole speed or
This study is focused on the centralized motor drive torque requirements.
mode, which means the vehicle driving force is solely 2. Brake pedal signal. Based on the brake pedal sig-
provided by one motor. The motor driving force is nal, the power on and power off of the motor
transmitted to the wheels through the gearbox, main are controlled by the vehicle.
reducer, and differential unit to drive the vehicle. By 3. Gear signal. Based on the gear signal, the neu-
analyzing the gears, pedals, and other signals, the tral, forward, and reverse motions of the motor
motor speed or motor torque is controlled by the vehi- are controlled by the vehicle to achieve the vehi-
cle controller to enable driving of the vehicle. The cle forward and reverse driving.
basic signals required for the vehicle controller are as 4. Wheel rotational speed signal. Vehicle controller
follows: needs to collect the wheel speed signal to
4 Advances in Mechanical Engineering

Table 1. Number of ports of the vehicle controller. the battery electricity into 5 V DC power needed by the
ICs, there are two issues to be solved. The first is that
Module Number of channels the large voltage reduction from 24 to 5 V is difficult to
Digital input 12 convert using regular conventional power conversion
Digital input with frequency 4 ICs. The second is that the 500 kHz CAN signal is very
capturing sensitive to disturbances. In addition, it requires a pure
Digital output 12 power supply to avoid fluctuations, which means an
PWM output 8
Analog input 8
independent power supply should be provided for the
CAN bus communication 3 CAN module.
RS485 communication 1 Therefore, the controller is designed with two-level
24 V to 5 V power supplies 2 power supply modules. The higher level is shown in
PWM: pulse width modulation; CAN: controller area network.
Figure 3, which converts 24 V DC from the battery into
9 V DC by a switching power converter. To absorb
surge from the battery power and filter out fluctuations
and alternate components from the external circuit,
determine the driving state of the vehicle and to large capacitors and inductors are added in the front
perform closed-loop control of the wheel speed. end. TVS diode D01 is used to absorb surge power and
5. Speed signal. The speed signal is collected to avoid the damage of component surge pulse. PSU-24-9
help determine the vehicle driving state and for is the voltage conversion module. The capacitance and
display. inductance in the figure are mainly used for filtering.
Meanwhile, the IN4007 diode provides reverse connec-
Table 1 shows the number of ports required for this tion protection.
project, including digital input, output, analog input, The lower level power supply module is shown in
PWM (pulse width modulation) output ports, and three Figure 4, which is converted from 9 V DC into two sep-
CAN bus communication channels. The central pro- arate 5 V DC power sources. One way based on
cessing unit is based on Freescale MC9S12XDP512 LM2940 switching power IC is to obtain 5 V 2 W
microcontroller,20 which can satisfy the requirements of power, as shown in Figure 4(a), for the microcontroller
the vehicle controller development and commissioning and most of the other ICs. Another circuit in Figure
tasks greatly. 4(b) based on ASM1117 chip is to obtain stabilized 5 V
power for the CAN circuit only.
The microcontroller is based on a Freescale
Hardware design MC9S12XDP512 single chip computer and the mini-
The detailed pin definition of the vehicle controller is mum system is designed as recommended in the man-
presented in Table 2. Each CAN module consists of a ual.21 The CAN communication circuit is one of the
high channel and a low channel, which are respectively most important parts of the controller. Each of the
transmitted by two individual pins. Extra pins men- three CAN channels is based on one TJA105022 chip
tioned in Table 1 but not in Table 2 are reserved for using the circuit, as shown in Figure 5. TJA1050 is a
later usage. high-speed CAN transceiver.
The power, which is supplied to the vehicle control- As shown in Figure 6, the digital input circuit is pro-
ler, is provided by the 24 V vehicle battery. To convert tected by a TLP521 optical coupler. Most of the digital

Table 2. Pin definition of the vehicle controller.

ID Pin description ID Pin description ID Pin description

VCC DC Power 0–32 V Digital Input 1 Key on Digital Input 12 Backup

GND GND Digital Input 2 Key start Digital Output 1 Pre-charging relay
COM 1 Vehicle CAN High Digital Input 3 Hand brake Digital Output 2 Interlock relay 1
COM 2 Vehicle CAN Low Digital Input 4 HEV Digital Output 3 Interlock relay 2
COM 3 Power CAN High Digital Input 5 Turn off Digital Output 4 Interlock relay 3
COM 4 Power CAN Low Digital Input 6 Gear forward Digital Output 5 Radiator relay 1
COM 5 MCU 485 Digital Input 7 Gear backward Digital Output 6 Radiator relay 2
Analog Input 1 Acceleration pedal Digital Input 8 Gear neutral Digital Output 7 Water pump relay
Analog Input 2 Velocity sensor Digital Input 9 Backup Digital Output 8 Starter relay
Analog Input 3 Brake pedal Digital Input 10 Backup Digital Output 9 High-voltage relay
Analog Input 4 Wheel speed sensor Digital Input 11 Backup
Zhao et al. 5

Figure 3. Higher level power supply module.

Figure 4. Lower level power supply module: (a) Power supply for the control board and (b) Power supply for the CAN bus interface.

inputs are negative controls, which means when an As shown in Figure 7, the digital output circuit also
external switch is grounded, the 24 V DC current will uses TLP521 optical coupler to protect the microcon-
go through the left side of TLP521, leading to the right troller pins. The working principle is similar to that in
side also connected to the ground. Therefore, VCC Figure 6.
originally, applied on the microcontroller digital pin, Figure 8 shows an example of an analog input cir-
will be discharged by giving a logic change from high cuit. To remove fluctuations in the external signal, the
to low. TLP521 is a current-driven photocoupler, and input analog signal goes through a filter. Then it applies
the resistance in the figure is current-limiting. on the analog input pin of the microcontroller. To
6 Advances in Mechanical Engineering

Figure 5. CAN communication circuit.

Figure 6. Digital input circuit.

remove high and low frequency noises, two capacitors Based on the electric vehicle dynamic performance
are set as 0.1 and 0.001 mF, respectively. The resistance index, the three-phase asynchronous motor with the
and capacitance in the figure make up the filter circuit. model HPQ7.5 ybe-72 is finally selected, with consider-
ation of the motor efficiency and reliability. The motor
rated power and peak power are 15 and 7.5 kW, respec-
Control strategies tively; the rated torque and peak torque are 26.5 and
The vehicle control strategies have been modeled in the 115 N m, respectively; and the rated speed and maxi-
MATLAB/Simulink and AVL.Cruise22–26 and sum- mum speed are 2700 and 5500 r/min, respectively, which
marized into torque control mode, as follows. meets the demand of power index design.
Zhao et al. 7

Figure 7. Digital output circuit.

Figure 8. Analog input circuit.

Acceleration pedal signal processing mode

The signal of acceleration pedal opening can directly Figure 9. The characteristics of the sensor output signal.
reflect the demand intention of the motor torque of the
driver compared with other input signals, which is
closely related to the safety of personal property. As shown in Figure 9, in the scope of the pedal
According to the standard of ISO26262, it is necessary travel, two-way signal voltage DU = 0.5 V, the two out-
to design the signal collecting sensor of acceleration put signals are simultaneously processed by the VCU
pedal, which is opening with redundancy to ensure its which is calibrated to digital by the A/D conversion
safety and reliability. More importantly, because of the module. Then, the final signal of acceleration pedal
signal interference and the electromagnetic interference opening (input signal of the control strategy) is
of the road roughness, acceleration pedal sensitivity, obtained by removing the dither with the filtering,
and the high-voltage circuit of the electric system, the threshold, and the synchronization monitoring. The
filter circuit for the signal of acceleration pedal is neces- flowchart of the acceleration pedal signal acquisition is
sary, which is designed to dispose the anti-interference shown in Figure 10.
and anti-fluctuation. Two non-contact hall sensors are
employed to pick up the signal of acceleration pedal
opening to ensure the reliable of the work, which will Filtering processing. The error of road roughness, the jit-
increase the redundancy and improve the ability of the ter of the driver, and the sensitivity of the accelerator
system fault self-diagnosis in this study. pedal will generate the occasional interference signal in
8 Advances in Mechanical Engineering

circuit. By comparing the U0 and the voltage, present

value of the accelerator pedal in the memory is (Umin,
Umax), if U0 \ Umin, Uout = Umin is output; if
U0 . Umax, Uout = Umax is output.

Synchronization monitoring. As shown in Figure 9, the dif-

ference between the output signals of the two sensors is
0.5 V in the normal condition. The simultaneity of the
two output signals is judged by synchronization moni-
toring mode, which will guarantee the accuracy and
reliability of the signal.
The signal acquisition module is built in
SIMULINK to realize the off-line simulation. The
simulation model is shown in Figure 11, while the
results are shown in Figure 12, where the red line is the
original signal and the blue line is the post-processing
signal. In addition, the established model is ideal for
the signal processing shown in Figure 12.

Model analysis of control strategy

There are three processing curves for acceleration pedal
opening and motor torque load factor L, as shown in
Figure 13.27,28
Figure 10. Acceleration pedal signal collection flowchart. In Figure 13, a, b, and c correspond to general
mode, dynamic mode, and economic mode, respec-
tively. Under the dynamic model, the speed of accelera-
the vehicle driving. It is necessary to dispose the signal tion is strong and adapts to high load and slope. Under
of accelerator pedal strictly due to the error of the accel- the general mode, the acceleration is stable and suitable
erator pedal signal which will cause the loss of vehicle for smooth running condition. Under the economic
control. To guarantee the sensitivity and reliability of model, the power battery and the driving motor can be
the signal, the acceleration pedal signal collecting and fully utilized and the energy utilization rate is high.
filtering algorithm is put into the interrupt service pro-
gram, which employs the first-order low-pass RC filter
Integrated mode control strategy
circuit for the collection of accelerator pedal signal and
removes the dither of secondary filtering. From the above analysis, the single-mode control strat-
egy can only meet the single driving condition, while
the urban road conditions are diversified. A compre-
Threshold processing. The output voltage Uout will be hensive control strategy should be designed according
abnormal when the trouble occurs such as short-circuit to the specific road conditions.
and open-circuit of accelerator pedal or the electromag- The driver’s demand power is not only reflected in
netic interference of the electric vehicle high-voltage the accelerator pedal opening but also related to the

Figure 11. The signals acquisition module.

Zhao et al. 9

Figure 12. Simulation comparison.

Figure 14. Acceleration pedal treatment curve under

comprehensive mode.

Figure 13. Accelerator pedal treatment curve.

change rate of pedal opening. With the change of the

same pedal opening, the more urgent the driver’s
demand for torque is, the faster the pedal opening rate
will be changed.
In this section, the torque of the basic torque is given Figure 15. MAP curve of motor torque under comprehensive
based on the given integrated mode, and the compensa- mode.
tion torque considering the change rate of pedal open-
ing is used as the motor torque MAP of this study. In
general, MAP is a kind of data curve generated during saving mode when the speed of the accelerator pedal is
motor testing, which mainly reflects the distribution of 0%–20%. The L-Acc curve under the general mode is
motor efficiency under different rotational speeds and adopted when the speed of the accelerator pedal is
torques. accelerated from 20% to 80%, while the L-Acc curve
under the dynamic mode is adopted in the 80%–100%
accelerator pedal opening, and the three-section curve
Basic output torque. The driver’s demand for torque is is interpolated. The minimum interpolation method is
directly reflected on the depth of his accelerator pedal. used to get the corresponding relationship between the
If the driver needs a large torque, such as rapid accel- torque load coefficient L and the accelerator pedal
eration and fast start, the driver will step down the opening Acc in the integrated mode, and the L-Acc
accelerator pedal and the pedal opening value is also curve is shown in Figure 14.
larger, which is close to the dynamic pattern recogni- The motor torque MAP is shown in Figure 15.
tion. If the driver needs less torque, that is, when the Based on the graph, torque changes are more intensive
vehicle starts steadily and accelerates slowly, the driver under low opening and high opening, which can con-
step down the speed pedal is shallow, and the pedal sider both vehicle power and economy. Under medium
opening is also smaller. It is close to energy-saving pat- pedal opening, the torque increases uniformly to meet
tern recognition. In this case, the method used in this the general needs of vehicle running in the middle
article is to employ the L-Acc curve under the energy- period.
10 Advances in Mechanical Engineering

Figure 16. Vehicle speed membership function. Figure 17. Membership function of accelerating pedal opening
change rate.

Torque of compensation. The control strategy of the

above comprehensive model can basically meet the tor-
que requirements of different working conditions. On
this basis, the sensitivity of torque output to driver’s
operation can be further improved by proper correc-
tion. The basic torque of the comprehensive model
does not consider the influence of the driver’s speed of
the accelerator pedal on the torque demand. When the
driver urgently needs acceleration, the speed of the
accelerator pedal will have a great change rate. Besides,
the driver controls the vehicle mainly by judging the
speed of the vehicle. Therefore, two independent vari-
ables can be chosen as the input variable of the fuzzy
controller, which are the speed of the vehicle and the
speed of the accelerator pedal opening. The compensa-
tion torque is decided and the torque MAP curve is
Figure 18. Compensation torque membership function.
added to the integrated mode to improve the operation
sensitivity. This article will take the pedal opening rate
and speed as input, the compensation torque as output, The membership function of each variable is defined as
and then a fuzzy controller is designed, which can bet- follows. The speed of the input variable and the change rate
ter achieve the driver’s intention. of the accelerator pedal speed use the triangle function, the
Fuzzy control refers to the precise mathematical output variable compensation torque is Gauss’ function,
model that does not depend on the system, fuzzing the and the traditional Mamdani-type fuzzy inference rules are
variables and defining the membership function. The used to get the membership function curves of the three
precision of calculating the output by the fuzzy rules is variables, such as Figures 16–18.
worth the control algorithm. Compared with classical The fuzzy rules are defined as shown in Table 3.
control theory, it has strong robustness.25,26,29 The drawing compensation torque surface using
The domain division of the variables is defined as MATLAB is shown in Figure 19.
follows. The speed range of the low-speed pure electric It can be seen from the compensation torque curve in
vehicle is defined by second chapters as 0–50 km/h, and Figures 3–18, that the compensation torque is larger in
the domain is divided into five intervals, including the the low-speed startup stage and the fast-speed accelera-
lowest ZS, low speed S, medium M, high speed B, and tion stage when the accelerator pedal is opened.
the highest HB. The range of acceleration pedal change Meanwhile, the demand power is increased, and the
rate is 0–100%/s, and the domain is divided into mini- actual control requirements are met.
mum ZS, small S, medium M, large B, and maximum
HB. The compensation torque range is 0–20 N and the Simulation and analysis of vehicle dynamic performance. To
domain is divided into minimum ZS, small S, medium further verify the drive control strategy, AVL-Cruise
M, large B, and maximum HB. simulation software is used to analyze the vehicle’s
Zhao et al. 11

Table 3. Fuzzy control rule of compensation torque.

Accelerated pedal Speed (km/h)

opening change
rate (%/s)
ZS S M B HB

ZS ZS ZS ZS ZS ZS
S M S S ZS ZS
M B M M S ZS
B ZB B B M S
HB ZB ZB ZB B M

insufficient. The main reason is that the maximum

Figure 19. Compensatory torque curve. speed is about 40 km/h determined by the peak charac-
teristic curve of the motor and the reducer, which is
consistent with the dynamic performance index we pro-
dynamic performance. Parameters of each module are posed and the subsequent real vehicle bench test.
set in AVL-Cruise, and once the settings are completed,
the whole vehicle simulated will be started. The simula-
tion condition is selected as the standard urban cycle Control software
condition in China, including a variety of working con-
ditions such as rapid acceleration, which can verify Underlayer software design
whether the driving control strategy in this article can The underlayer of the controller software performs ana-
meet the requirements of the vehicle’s dynamic perfor- log acquisition, digital acquisition, digital output, and
mance. Finally, the simulation results are compared CAN bus driver, which connect the system hardware to
with the real vehicle test results. Figure 20 shows the the application layer.29 It is designed for the specific
typical urban driving cycles in China. Figure 21 shows hardware and called up by the application layer. The
the built vehicle model. functions of the underlayer software modules are intro-
Figure 22 shows the simulation results of speed fol- duced below:
lowing. As can be seen from Figure 22, the actual speed
of the car can basically follow the speed required in the 1. Analog acquisition. The vehicle controller needs
cycle condition. When the vehicle needs rapid accelera- to collect the analog signals, such as the braking
tion (the speed needs to be accelerated from 0 to 50 km/ signal and the accelerator pedal signal.
h), the vehicle’s power performance is obviously Meanwhile, it provides the reference and judges

Figure 20. Typical urban driving cycles in China.

12 Advances in Mechanical Engineering

Figure 21. Vehicle simulation model.

Figure 22. Simulation results of speed following.

the basis for the driving control application when the voltage is lower than 1.75 V, the regis-
based on the value of these analog signals. The ter returns a value of 0 (low level). Filtering is
analog acquisition is realized by the AD func- not needed for the digital ports. The vehicle
tion of the microcontroller. The AD module of controller reads digital signals from the charge
the microcontroller converts the input analog confirmation switch, braking switch, and
signal into digital quantity. The actual voltage other detection levels to control the vehicle.
value of the analog input can be obtained by The digital outputs are in a similar manner
reading the corresponding register. related to many relays to perform functional
2. Digital acquisition and output. The value of the controls.
digital acquisition is 0 and 1. When the supply 3. CAN bus driver. The CAN bus underlying driver
voltage is 5 V, the microcontroller contains hys- includes bus module initialization, the sending
teresis ranging between 1.75 and 3.25 V. When message program, and the receiving message
the voltage is higher than 3.25 V, the value program. The CAN module 1 and module 2
returned by the register is 1 (high level), and both use baud rate of 500 kHz.
Zhao et al. 13

pre-charging contactor is closed, it can enter the

starting mode.
3. Driving mode. When the vehicle is in the non-
charging state, the key is placed in the START
position for more than 0.5 s, and the power system
(including VCU, MCU, and BMS) if free of emer-
gency failures then it can enter the driving state.
After entering this mode, the VCU calculates the
current desired torque based on the accelerator
pedal position information, the brake pedal infor-
mation, the gear position information, the vehicle
speed, and the state of the battery and the motor,
and drives the vehicle by transmitting the desired
torque to the motor controller.
4. Fault diagnosis mode. According to the abnor-
mal operation and fault information on the
vehicle, the system performs control of the vehi-
cle driving state.

The system working process can be described by the

flowchart in Figure 23.
The driving mode is the most important part of the
controller since it determines how the vehicle runs on
the road and how emergency is handled. The flowchart
of the driving mode is presented in Figure 24.

Calibration and experiment

Manufacture of prototype controller
As shown in Figure 25, a prototype controller board
Figure 23. The vehicle control flowchart.
has been made in the lab after a comprehensive design
of hardware and software of the controller. A standard
Application layer software design industrial connector has been equipped on the board to
enable connection with a vehicle.
The application layer of the controller software per- The functionalities of the controller have been tested
forms the following working modes: thoroughly to ensure all the digital and analog ports
are working properly. The CAN interface circuit in the
1. Charging mode. When the power is plugged into earlier version of the design did not use independent
the charging interface, VCU will collect the power supply, and the signal quality, which is shown in
effective charging enabling signal and CAN bus Figure 26(a), is badly affected by the power source and
signal from the charger, and make charging the electromagnet effects. In the final prototype, an
judgment. When the vehicle is in the static state, independent power supply based on ASM1117 has been
the gear is neutral, the throttle is reset to zero, added very close to the CAN circuit and leads to very
the main contactor of the motor controller is good signal quality as shown in Figure 26(b).
turned off, and the BMS is fault-free. Then, the
VCU sends the allow charging CAN message to
the BMS. After charging starts, the charging
Calibration and experiment
contactor is open, and the vehicle is prohibited The calibration process is mainly to achieve two aspects
to enter other modes until charging ends. of the functions, one is to monitor the parameters of
2. Starting mode. In this mode, the VCU performs the vehicle controller and the second is based on the
the related action according to the position of calibration process to adjust the parameters online. The
the key. If it is placed in the ON position, calibration contents include both bench calibration and
the system performs self-test. When the related on-vehicle road calibration. This study is aimed at con-
pre-charging operation is completed, and the structing a vehicle controller research and development
14 Advances in Mechanical Engineering

Figure 24. The driving mode control flowchart.

platform, and therefore, it is more focused on the bench

calibration methodology. It is mainly based on simula-
tion results to test and verify the control algorithm, and
the main contents are as below:

Static parameter calibration, such as motoring maxi-

mum torque/power and base speed.
Simulate a variety of driving conditions, such as
starting, driving, and braking, test design functions
and analyze dynamic characteristics.
Comprehend the law of calibration for a variety of
parameters and determine the approximate para-
meter reference values and calibration range.

As shown in Figure 27, the bench test system has

been developed based on a 55 kW dynamometer Figure 25. The vehicle controller prototype.
Zhao et al. 15

Figure 26. The quality of the output CAN signal: (a) without using independent power supply and (b) using independent power
supply.

Figure 27. 55 kW dynamometer test system.

Figure 28. Changes of output torque (red) with braking signal

(blue).
machine. Accelerator pedal, braking pedal, and gear
signals are connected to the vehicle controller to simu-
late a vehicle operation environment, the controller
output is sent to the motor controller, and the dynam-
ometer machine is adjusted in several different scenar-
ios to simulate vehicle driving conditions.
The dynamometer output was recorded in the soft-
ware for analysis. Figure 28 shows the controller out-
put torque in red color varies with the braking signal in
blue color. Greater braking signal leads to higher brak-
ing torque. The gear level indicated by the green line
remains the same, and the throttle level in yellow color
is released during braking.
Figure 29 shows the changes of torque in the red
curve varies with throttle signals in yellow, combined
with gear changes in the green color. The gears are only
set to 0 neutral, 1 forward, and 2 reverse. Therefore, it Figure 29. Changes of torque (red) with throttle (yellow) and
can be seen with gear 1, the output torque rises quickly gear (green) levels.
with the throttle signals, while with gear 2, the output
torque expands in the negative area with opening throt-
tle signals, indicating a reversing state. These should be comprehensively analyzed and opti-
After all, many results can be collected from the mized to construct stable and efficient vehicle control
vehicle controller research and development platform. strategies, which will be investigated in later studies.
16 Advances in Mechanical Engineering

Conclusion Shandong Province Higher Institution Science and

Technology Plan Project (Grant No J17KA028), Special
This study presents a design of a vehicle control Fund Plan for Local Science and Technology Development
research and development platform. The platform con- Lead by Central Authority, Shandong Province Natural
sists of a genuinely designed vehicle controller and a Science Foundation (Grant No. ZR2014EL023), and
55 kW dynamometer test system, connected with CAN Scientific Research Fund of Liaocheng University, China
bus communication protocol and torque control strate- (Grant No. 3180500/318011519).
gies. The major contribution of this article is it presents
a complete design structure of such a complex system, ORCID iD
which is rare in public academic literatures. The con-
Ying Zhao https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9489-6570
troller hardware is constructed with a Freescale
MC9S12XDP512 single chip computer as the central
processing unit. The system is designed with the follow- References
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