A joystick driving control algorithm with a longitudinal collision avoidance scheme for an electric vehicle

In this paper, we develop a joystick manual driving algorithm for an electric vehicle called Cycab. Cycab is developed as a public transportation vehicle, which can be driven either by a manual joystick or an automated driving mode. The vehicle uses six motors for driving four wheels, and front/rear steerings. Cycab utilizes one industrial PC with a real time Linux kernel and four Motorola MPC555 micro controllers, and a CAN network for the communication among the five processors. The developed algorithm consists of two automatic vehicle speed control algorithms for normal and emergency situations that override the driver’s joystick command and an open loop torque distribution algorithm for the traction motors. In this study, the algorithm is developed using SynDEx, which is a system level CAD software dedicated to rapid prototyping and optimizing the implementation of real-time embedded applications on distributed architectures. The experimental results verify the usefulness of the two automatic vehicle control algorithms.