Velocity Control of an Electric Vehicle over a CAN Network

Distributed control applications require a reliable network for information exchange. The network discussed on this paper uses CAN bus as a means of communication to control the speed of an electric vehicle. National Instruments Programmable Automation Controller, Compact RIO, based on Lab VIEW programming environment is used to execute one of two different speed control algorithms (PID or fuzzy logic) to test the performance of the implemented vehicle network and the control algorithm itself. It also acts as a human-machine interface via a personal computer. The proposed network provides robustness in terms of communication and opens the possibility of expansion to develop complete control architecture in order to successfully build a fully autonomous vehicle.