Rally Car Instrumentation for Dynamic Driving Behaviour Studies

This work supplies a roadmap on how a researcher can effectively perform real vehicular experiments. It provides detailed guidelines for constructing a versatile low-cost experimental apparatus suitable to be fitted on rally cars, oriented to high speed driving modeling research. Furthermore, the paper delineates about driver models and depicts the required processing from raw measurements to user friendly data suitable for research. Finally, it provides a case study on driving behaviour analysis. The custom built equipment, from the mechanical parts to the open-source based software are thoroughly described.

Description

The equipment has been developed to be versatile, robust in operation and low cost. The hardware for the data acquisition is a low cost DAQ from National Instruments and a custom programmed microcontroller for the TTL signals, such as the wheel speeds and the engine RPM. Most of the parts hardware are prototypes, machined from my designs with CNC. The electronics are also all custom soldered on PCBs.

The data are collected to the computer though USB connection with a custom developed data logger program performing real time visualization of the state variables with a custom program written in C/C++, utilizing the open source OpenCV.

Software and hardware were developed so as to be publishable, since now everything can be distributed freely. The same is true for the custom designed signal conditioning PCBs, performing filtering for antializing and amplification for strain measurement from the torque sensor (manufactured from USA). The National Instruments (NI) DAQ communicates with the data logging software program through the NI C (language) API (application interface). This was developed to avoid the use of the expensive Labview which is originally the program that works with NI DAQ. This serves two purposes. Publish ability and versatility in the code.

Contact Information

ir. Diomidis Katzourakis

d (dot) katzourakis (at) tudelft (dot) nl

Address

Biomechanical Engineering and

Intelligent Automotive Systems Group

Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering (3mE),

Technical University of Delft (TUDelft),

Mekelweg 2, 2628 CD, Delft,

The Netherlands

Dr. Efstathios Velenis

efstathios (dot) velenis (at) brunel (dot) ac (dot) uk

Address

School of Engineering and Design,

Brunel University

Uxbridge, Middlesex, UB8-3PH

Office: Howell Centre H114

Tel: +44(0)1895 267589

Fax: +44(0)18995 256392

 

 

 

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Last modified: 09/20/10