A vision for automotive electronics hardware-in-the-loop testing

The widespread application of electronics to automotive powertrain, chassis and body systems for improved performance, reliability and safety is chall enging from an engineering design perspective. The continued progression fr om stand-alone electronic controllers to the integration of distributed con trollers, using communication buses to share information, places greater de mands on the design and validation tools. During the past two decades, prod uct development and test equipment has evolved from static simulators, whic h demand user participation throughout a test, to automated testing station s which provide realistic operating conditions but require highly trained s upport staff: In this paper, the vision and realization of an economical au tomotive hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) mechatronic system testing tool will be presented. Specifically, the hardware and software features for a modular and user friendly bench top simulator will be presented based on extensive experience with electronic controller testing. Two systems-level tests for an antilock brake and traction control system controller will be presented to demonstrate the capabilities of HIL automotive simulators.