Car of the future to be safe, lightweight and affordable

Vehicles of the future will increasingly be electric and autonomous, with the aim that they should be as safe and reliable as today's cars. One way to avoid failures is to have important components such as driver and brake assistance systems, which ensure greater safety especially in critical situations, available in duplicate. However, surplus elements are expensive and heavy. Together with partners from science and industry, researchers at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) are looking for other options in the SmartLoad project.

In aircrafts that are already self-flying to a great extent, it is common to install all safety-relevant systems in duplicate. The project partners now want to find ways to detect damage in cars early instead in order to manage imminent threats. "In the SmartLoad project we want to develop completely new methods of fault prevention and prediction," says Albert Albers from the IPEK Institute of Product Engineering at KIT. "Up until now in the development of automated vehicles, series models currently available have been equipped with additional technology with the result that the cars have many more components. Our approach now is to develop vehicles that manage without the baggage of additional components," says Michael Frey from the Institute of Vehicle System Technology (FAST) at KIT.

For safe and reliable operation, it is necessary to look at the whole vehicle with all its mechanical and electronic components, as well as their interaction with the driver, according to Frey. "In the SmartLoad project we are testing this approach using steering assistance as an example. We are using a drive that individually controls each wheel. Because whereas normal power steering consists of a motor that helps the driver turn the steering wheel, the wheels are now controlled differently on the left and the right which makes steering immediately easier." This allows for a failure of the power steering system to be compensated for without having to install the same system twice like before.

Additionally, electric and self-driving vehicles in which all four wheels are individually driven and steered can perform entirely new maneuvers. "It's obvious that previous standard tests that are based on driving cycles are not suitable for testing these cars," says Albert Albers. The aim here is for test stations to provide a solution; while they test individual components, they lead them to believe that they are installed in a vehicle that is currently doing a test drive – for example through the Black Forest. The project partners have separate test stations. These are connected within the national "XiL-BW-e" laboratory network for electric mobility, which means they can show in real time all aspects that are relevant for vehicle development.

This is how maximum loads on individual components as well as error chains of the subsystems involved could be determined, for example failure of a drive during emergency braking when the car is cornering. In the project, researchers can use a total of seven test stations in the XiL network in Karlsruhe, Stuttgart and Wangen. New electronic components will then be developed based on the test results. "Our ultimate goal is to make automatic vehicles less complex and, as a result, more robust," says Frey. "And, of course, fewer components means lower costs and a lower weight, which would be beneficial for the range and would therefore also lead to greater acceptance by the customer."

Provided by Karlsruhe Institute of Technology