Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) Test Platform Development for Seat Electronic Control Unit (ECU) Validation

Hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing is part of automotive V-design which is commonly used in automotive industries for the development of Electronic Control Unit (ECU). HIL test platform provides the capacity to test the ECU in a controlled environment even with scenarios that would be too dangerous or impractical to test on real situation, also the ECU can be tested even before the actual plant under building. This paper presents a HIL test platform for the validation of a seat ECU. The HIL platform can also be used for control and diagnostics algorithm development. The HIL test platform consists of three parts: a real time target machine (dSPACE SCALEXIO AutoBox), an ECU (Magna Seating M12 Module), and a signal conditioning unit (Load Box). The ECU produces the control commands to the real-time target machine through load box. The real time target machine hosts the plant model of the power seat which includes the kinematics and dynamics of the seat movements. The virtual model within SCALEXIO generates feedback signals to the ECU via a load box. The load box is used as a signal conditioning unit for conditioning signals and providing real current load in between the real time target machine and the ECU. The modeling and HIL integration approach will be discussed in this paper. Test results indicate that the developed seat plant model can effectively represent the real seat once the model is validated with proper tools and procedures. Therefore, this virtual model can be used to validate control algorithm of the power seat ECU.