Enhanced Driver in Full Vehicle HIL-Simulator

The rate at which the electrical systems in vehicles such as trucks and buses ad-vance is increased due to technical improvements. This requires continuous de-velopment and advanced testing of these products. At Scania, which is a producerof trucks and buses, they have a simulator to test the electrical systems in thesevehicles. A complete vehicle is created in the simulator where the psychical elec-tronics are tested and the rest of the signals are simulated. One of the simulatedcomponents is a driver algorithm which is used to control the vehicle. This driveralgorithm is today an integrated part of the simulator, which makes it difficult todo maintenance and changes on the driver algorithm. Therefore they want tocreate an external driver algorithm, i.e. a driver algorithm that is not part ofthe simulator. During this thesis work this driver algorithm will be created andtested.Firstly, a simplified vehicle model was created where it is possible to test thedriver algorithm. This was to make the implementation of the driver algorithmeasier, because the vehicle simulator is a narrow resource and to do all tests therewould be difficult. Two different approaches were tested, firstly, a model consis-tent of submodels and secondly, a time varying linear model. The one that gavethe best result was the driver algorithm with the time varying linear model, andthis was used for the rest of the thesis work.The driver algorithm can control the position of the gas and the brake pedalsto make the vehicle drive at a desired velocity. To make the driver follow thedesired velocity, a controller is used in the driver algorithm. Two different con-troller were tested in this master thesis, first a simple PID-controller and then amore advanced MPC. In addition to the ability to follow a reference the driveralgorithm is also able to behave as a human driver would, the driver algorithmdo not for example use both the pedals at the same time.Finally, both the driver algorithms will be compared with each other and withthe internal, already existing driver algorithm. The MPC-based driver algorithmgave the best result, which was almost as good as the internal driver algorithm