After a great finish in last year’s competition, Ohio State continues to lead the Hardware in the Loop (HIL) development in Year 2 with a first place finish in the HIL Evaluation event that took place at the EcoCAR Winter Workshop in January! This presentation was a technical demonstration of the team’s continued development with its HIL setup.
HIL enables OSU to develop its vehicle much faster and with less software development required once the vehicle is put together. This is because HIL allows the team to develop and test its software in parallel with its physical vehicle integration. In fact, they think using HIL methodology for vehicle development is so effective that they teamed up with EcoCAR and their HIL sponsor, dSPACE, to film a video about it.
John Kruckenberg, OSU's controls team leader, sitting next to the team's HIL set up
The OSU video discusses the control challenges of developing a vehicle and illustrates the state-of-the-art hardware and techniques the team uses to solve engineering problems. The team explains its progression from mathematical models to lab-based tests with HIL, then to in-vehicle testing of its vehicle software, and finally taking its vehicle results back to the HIL bench for continued improvement. The video also highlights the team’s use of HIL for failure simulation, since testing for faults in a lab-bench environment is much safer than doing all of their fault analysis in the vehicle! Team members discuss their use of automated testing, which allows them to create a standard series of tests for validation of each new software release.
The OSU team would like to thank dSPACE for its sponsorship and support! The team’s success would not be possible without dSPACE’s extensive contributions and dedicated support! Take a look at how OSU takes HIL to the next level in the video below:
