U.S. Department of Transportation
Federal Highway Administration
1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE
Washington, DC 20590
202-366-4000
Federal Highway Administration Research and Technology
Coordinating, Developing, and Delivering Highway Transportation Innovations
| Project Information | ||
| Project ID: | FHWA-PROJ-14-0028 | |
| Project Name: | Hardware-in-the-loop Simulation Tool for Connected Vehicle Technology Evaluation | |
| Project Status: | Active | |
| Start Date: | March 12, 2014 | |
| End Date: | March 11, 2017 | |
| Contact Information | ||
| Last Name: | Huang | |
| First Name: | Peter | |
| Telephone: | 202-493-3484 | |
| E-mail: | peter.huang@dot.gov | |
| Office: | Office of Operations Research and Development | |
| Team: | Trans Ops Concepts and Analysis Team [HRDO-20] | |
| Program: | Exploratory Advanced Research | |
| Project detail | ||
| Project Description: | The two fundamental challenges related to the connected vehicle highway system are necessity of phased deployment (because such a system cannot be built overnight) and high system complexity due to the number and types of vehicles, communication devices, and road conditions involved. The aim of this project is the development of new approaches for testing connected vehicle technologies safely and economically. The project will develop a hardware-in-the-loop simulation (HiLS)system that integrates vehicular traffic/wireless communication simulation models with a rapid prototyping powertrain research platform and a signal control cabinet. As far as the researchers are aware, the proposed HiLS testbed is the first attempt to integrate a microscopic traffic simulation with a laboratory powertrain research platform and real-time traffic signals. In this testbed, real-time traffic signals from a test site will feed into a microscopic traffic model to set the background traffic. The traffic simulation is coupled with a wireless communication network model to evaluate the performance of information transmission between vehicles (vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V)) and between vehicles and infrastructure (vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I)). From the simulated traffic stream, a particular vehicle can be selected and its power demand sent in real-time to the powertrain research platform, where an actual engine in the laboratory will be operated to emulate thevehicle motion. | |
| Goals: | The objective of this project is to build a hardware-in-the-loop simulation (HiLS) testbed to test and assess the performance of connected vehicles applications. | |
| Product Type: | Data Hardware Research report Software Technical report | |
| Test Methodology: | There are three major technical milestones for the project: (1) Development of the hardware-in-the-loop simulation (HiLS) testbed. The proposed HiLS testbed consists of four components a microscopic traffic simulation model, a wireless communication network model, a traffic signal control cabinet, and a laboratory powertrain research platform. To integrate these components into a seamless testbed, several middleware programs are required, including the communication, signal cabinet, powertrain, and cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC) middleware. Once the middleware programs are developed, the HiLS testbed will be calibrated and validated with a road test in a controlled environment at FHWAs Saxton Transportation Operations Laboratory (STOL) and with real-time traffic data collected from a test site on TH-55 in Minnesota. (2) Evaluation of the CACC technology using the HiLS testbed. Once the HiLS testbed is fully functional, the CACC technology will be tested using the testbed. The CACC middleware will facilitate the connection between the CACC controller with the traffic simulation model and the rest of the testbed. Representative CACC control methodologies will be implemented on the testbed and evaluated for various traffic scenarios. The mobility and environmental impacts of the CACC technology will be measured with laboratory instruments, including the fuel consumption and emissions measurement. (3) Building a living laboratory to calibrate the HiLS testbed further. To calibrate the models in the HiLS testbed further, a living laboratory on TH-55 will be constructed. Roadsite units and a small number of vehicles will be instrumented to facilitate vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication. Field data will be collected to calibrate the HiLS models further. | |
| Expected Benefits: | If successful, the proposed HiLS testbed will offer a flexible, effective, safe, and economical approach for testing connected vehicle applications, such as cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC). | |
| Deliverables: | Name: Hardware-in-the-loop testbed and technical report. Product Type(s): Research report, Software, Hardware, Data, Technical report Description: The main deliverables of the projects include: a fully functional Hardware-in-the-loop simulation (HiLS) testbed, a softwarepackage including the traffic simulation, the communication simulation and all the middleware that integrate the software and the hardware into the testbed, a functional living laboratory, two workshops to disseminate the findings of the project, and technical reports documenting the building of the testbed and the evaluation results of the Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC) technology. | |
| Related URL(s): | http://wwwcf.fhwa.dot.gov/exit.cfm?link=http://tti.tamu.edu/2014/06/01/testing-connected-transportation-innovations-starts-with-first-creating-the-test-itself/ |
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| FHWA Topics: | Research/Technologies--Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center (TFHRC) | |
| TRT Terms: | Hardware in the loop simulation Test beds Vehicle to vehicle communications Vehicle to infrastructure communications Operations Research |
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| FHWA Disciplines: | Safety Design |
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| Subject Areas: | Data and Information Technology |
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