The European research project ENABLE-S3 aims to enable validation for highly automated safe and secure systems. In the 3-year project funded by the ECSEL research program, European experts worked on industry-driven use cases to substitute today’s cost-intensive verification and validation efforts with more advanced and efficient methods. TTControl experts contributed to an autonomous control platform for the agriculture sector.
The ENABLE-S3 project focuses on improving the safety and security of automated systems in six domains: automotive, aerospace, rail, maritime, health and farming. It is coordinated by AVL List GmbH, featuring a consortium of 68 European OEMs, suppliers, tool providers as well as research institutions, jointly working on establishing cost-efficient cross-domain virtual and semi-virtual V&V platforms and methods for Autonomous Cyber-Physical Systems (ACPS). Advanced functional, safety and security test methods were developed in order to significantly reduce the verification and validation time but at the same time preserve the validity of the tests for the requested high operation range. This way, today’s physical validation and verification can be replaced by virtual testing and verification, coverage-oriented test selection methods and standardization.
At the final event in Graz that took place from 16 to 17 May 2019, the ENABLE-S3 project partners presented the key results of 3 years intense research activities in the area of automated systems. Visitors had the opportunity to gain first-hand insights into the demonstrators of six domains and meet the people driving this project.
The autonomous farming simulator project led by TTControl
Smart farming approaches can optimize resources, increase the level of efficiency and reduce costs as well as the use of pesticides through autonomous operations. TTControl contributed to the ENABLE-S3 farming use case in the field of autonomous driving for off-highway vehicles by developing an ADAS (Advanced driver-assistance systems) platform. Working together with the project partner Creanex, a HiL (Hardware-in-the-loop-simulation) test unit for vehicle control was built by the project team. The test system integrated a simulation by Creanex as well as TTControl’s HY-TTC 580 ECU that took over all simulated incoming and outgoing signals via CAN interfaces. The system allows for validating the control behavior of a farming vehicle, for example a harvester, enabling manual and autonomous control, whereby in both modes, the control signals are sent via the ECU to the simulation. A second ECU was integrated in the setup, interacting with the simulated harvester over CAN messages. In order to calculate optimal trajectories, the ECU reads driving speed, position and heading direction from the Creanex simulator while commanding the harvester by throttle, break and steering wheel signals. The algorithm was developed with Matlab and Simulink using Mathwork’s embedded coder for automated code generation of the control software that runs on the second ECU.
TTControl’s ECU family HY-TTC 500
The HY-TTC 580 is part of TTControl’s HY-TTC 500 family that offers high-end safety control units designed for a wide range of high-end applications such as construction and agricultural machines. The safety controllers fulfill requirements up to SIL 2 (IEC 61508) / PL d (ISO 13849) / AgPLd (ISO 25119) and can be programmed either in C or in CODESYS®. The safety certified CODESYS® Safety SIL 2 speeds up application validation of the certified controller significantly.
About the project partners
TTControl led the farming use case of the ENABLE-S3 project and worked with the two partners Creanex and Tecnalia.
Creanex Oy is a Finnish company specialized on mobile working machinery R&D, testing and training development. Creanex uses real-time simulation technology for different purposes and develops and manufactures training simulators for mining, forestry, rescue and construction equipment. Creanex simulators are also used for R&D of work equipment automation system development and testing. For R&D simulators both HIL and SIL applications are available. Simulators are used for machine control system development and testing by machine manufacturers. Testing with Creanex simulators can be manual, partly automated (automatic test execution, manual interpretation) or fully automated (automated test execution and interpretation).
Tecnalia is a leading private and independent research and technology organization in Spain and the fifth largest in Europe with a workforce of more than 1.400 international experts and more than 4.000 clients. Tecnalia operates in markets such as industry and transport, ICT, sustainable construction, energy and environment, innovation systems and health and was very active in the FP7 research program.
Find out more about the ENABLE-S3 farming project and the project’s final results.
