EcoEagles Hybrid Vehicle Control Architecture

The EcoCar Challenge provides 17 universities the opportunity to compete in the design and development of a new hybrid-vehicle based off of the 2009 Saturn Vue. At Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, the vehicle’s initial architecture has been designed that provides the opportunity for the vehicle to operate in up to four different modes: electric only, series, parallel thru the road, and gas only. The control architecture is comprised of the various embedded controllers throughout the vehicle plus the addition of two new computer systems. The first is a safety critical supervisory controller responsible for configuring the vehicle into one of the hybrid modes. The second is the Intelligent Drive Efficiency Assistant (I.D.E.A), which is responsible for suggesting the best hybrid mode possible given the anticipated state of the vehicle. This paper will present the control architecture and the hardware/software-in-the-loop test bed necessary to verify and evaluate the architecture as it is developed.