Hardware-In-the-Loop Simulator with Auto Building Vehicle Model for Adaptive Cruise Control System

A Hardware-In-the-Loop simulator with a vehicle-ready Electronic Control Unit (ECU) coupled with a vehicle model, simulating a real vehicle movement in real time, was developed. The simulator was used to validate the ECU software and hardware components of the Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) system.

The authors have modularized each vehicle component so that the entire vehicle model can be rebuilt automatically by selecting each component. This feature enables flexible and rapid building of the virtual vehicle. As a result, the simulator with auto building vehicle model allowed the development and validation of the ACC control system for various vehicle configurations.