Technological watch

Abstract Automobiles evolved from primarily mechanical to electro-mechanical, or mechatronic, vehicles. For example, carburetors have been replaced by fuel injection and air-fuel ratio control, leading to order of magnitude improvements in fuel economy and emissions. Mechatronic systems are pervasive in modern automobiles and represent a synergistic integration of mechanics, electronics and computer science. They are smart systems, whose design is more challenging than the separate design of their mechanical, electronic and computer/control components. In this review paper, two recent methods for the design of mechatronic components are summarized and their applications to problems in automotive control are highlighted. First, the combined design, or co-design, of a smart artifact and its controller is considered. It is shown that the combined design of an artifact and its controller can lead to improved performance compared to sequential design. The coupling between the artifact and controller design problems is quantified, and methods for co-design are presented. The control proxy function method, which provides ease of design as in the sequential approach and approximates the performance of the co-design approach, is highlighted with application to the design of a passive/active automotive suspension. Second, the design for component swapping modularity (CSM) of a distributed controller for a smart product is discussed. CSM is realized by employing distributed controllers residing in networked smart components, with bidirectional communication over the network. Approaches to CSM design are presented, as well as applications of the method to a variable-cam-timing engine, and to enable battery swapping in a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle.