Automotive Control

The following pages give an overview of the projects of the Automotive Control group at IRT. Main areas are the control of combustion engines, driver assistance systems and the control of hybrid drivetrains. Within these area different research projects with partners from industry and university institutes are carried out which are funded by own resources, national and international public funding or direct financing by industry.

Your contact person is Dipl.-Ing. Frank Heßeler.

The trend towards developing engines with increased efficiency, lowered emission levels and, at the same time, increased performance leads to a rising complexity of the engines and the combustion processes. This increases the demand for more complex controllers. This holds especially for the direct control of the combustion, which is a prerequisite for the realitation of homogeneous low temperature combustion processes.

In addition, due to the increased complexity, the isolated consideration of single components with individually optimized control loops is not able to reach the specified targets anymore. Instead, the combined consideration and coordination of all components involved is of great importance.

Besides the optimized controller layout for modern engines, the rapid model-based design and calibration of the control functionalities increases in importance due to the shortening of development time. For this, the Institute of Automatic Control carries out research in the area of Rapid Control Prototyping of engine controllers.

More information regarding the activities of the Institute of Automatic Control can be obtained here:

• Air path control of turbocharged diesel engines
• Control of HCCI and CAI engines
• Rapid Control Prototyping of engine controllers

Modern assistance systems that support the driver and autonomously take over certain drive tasks can contribute significantly to an increased traffic safety. In addition, they can improve the driver‘s comfort and reduce fuel consumption. Examples are ACC systems, lane keeping assistance and parking assistance.

The Institute of Automatic Control is engaged in solving the control challenges arising in the application of autonomous longitutinal and lateral guidance of vehicles. Moreover the automation of truck platoons is a focus of the Institute’s work. More details regarding this topic can be found here:

• ACC systems with Stop&Go functionality
• Automation of truck platoons