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Increasing electrification of the vehicle as well as the demands of increased connectivity presents automotive manufacturers with formidable challenges. Automakers and suppliers likely will encounter three practices that will influence how they develop and manufacture highly connected vehicles and future e-mobility platforms: 1) hierarchical production processes in fixed footprints that do not share data freely; 2) lack of real-time, in-line quality inspection and correction processes for complex miniaturized electronic components; and 3) floor to enterprise resource and execution systems that can collect, analyze and respond to rapidly changing production needs.

This paper presents highlights of assembly operations for the new 1975 model Ford Econoline III. All major assembly operations are covered. However, particular emphasis is placed on the automation used in body assembly. Econoline body and paint operations are performed at Ford's Ohio Truck Plant. Painted bodies are transported via special vans to the Lorain Assembly Plant for trim, frame and final assembly operations.

Does the well-reported employment shift to services imply that the U.S. is losing its industrial base? Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicate that despite a declining employment share, manufacturing industries continue to account for a large proportion of output. New projections to the year 2000 show more job losses for manufacturing, but because of new technologies and productivity gains, production keeps pace with GNP growth. The foreign trade situation improves as the falling value of the dollar makes imports more expensive, but the real trade balance still remains negative. The auto industry faces slower growth due to changing demographics.

Electronic equipment used in complex air, sea, and space vehicles is designed to be “line replaceable” in order to facilitate maintenance without major disruption of schedules. Unscheduled removals trigger a chain of events exposing the suspect equipment to none-to-gentle shipping and handling enroute to the test bench. Hare often than not a failure is not indentified, and the equipment is subjected to further abuse on the way back to the line. This paper discusses some of the potential causes of these “unconfirmed” failures and suggests some practical design approaches to minimize the problem. AERONAUTICAL AND AVIONIC engineers can take great pride in the advances they have made in their individual disciplines over the past 40 years. Despite the effectiveness of each, aircraft continue to be plagued with unconfirmed avionics removals, just as they were in the past. It is in this area that it seems little progress has been made.

Map matching determines which road a vehicle is on based on inaccurate measured locations, such as GPS points. Simple algorithms, such as nearest road matching, fail often. We introduce a new algorithm that finds a sequence of road segments which simultaneously match the measured locations and which are traversable in the time intervals associated with the measurements. The time constraint, implemented with a hidden Markov model, greatly reduces the errors made by nearest road matching. We trained and tested the new algorithm on data taken from a large pool of real drivers.

This paper describes the Electro-Multivision map navigation software mounted in the Toyota Soarer (1991). The following functions are required of on-board map navigation software: 1. Indication of the exact position of the vehicle to the driver 2. Determination of the optimum path to the destination and presentation of this route to the driver in the simplest way 3. Accommodation of a wide variety of destinations and settings for different users The following gives some examples of how these functions are achieved and outlines the associated technologies. 1. Path finding and associated display technology Path finding algorithm and technology for displaying the calculated on the map; construction of a data base on CD-ROM 2. Technology for determination of the current position utilizing map matching and the global positioning system(GPS) A method with improved reliability based on two current position outputs obtained using map matching and the GPS and the mutual compensation method 3.

This paper proposes how to develop an autonomous vehicle for factory and/or storehouse use. Where the geometric arrangement changes frequently due to the turnover of the cargo. We apply the sensor fusion technique by use of the Omni directional image sensor and laser radar generate the map of such situations. We propose a new update algorithm called SMT (Shift Matching Transform) that obtains region segments with trusted semi-real-time geometric map. We demonstrate how to determined the absolute position of the vehicle by the position information of arbitrary wall. Experimental results on the corridor, Shows the semi-real-time map reconstruction with enough validity.

Today''s maturing navigable map database serves as one of the cornerstones needed for the development and growing commercial success of ITS applications worldwide. Beyond convenience and commercial success, tomorrow''s map database will help make the automotive environment progressively safer and more secure.

Aimed to provide an effective solution for control-oriented applications, this paper proposes a novel method using a high-precision digital map to achieve high-accuracy positioning with fast updating rate. First, the map is developed using a high-definition LiDAR (Velodyne HDL 64E) and a RTK-GNSS system, which contains lane-level waypoints, road width, curb and typical obstacles along the road. Next, a robust version of ICP (Iterative Closest Point) is proposed to clean the corresponding points of large errors on map matching (MM). Finally, based on the large set of data from the environmental map, an unscented Kalman filter (UKF) is applied to fuse GNSS signal and dead reckoning (DR) to estimate the position. Thus the searching scope on the map can be considerably reduced so that the matching speed can be greatly improved. The high-precision digital map can be used not only for global path planning, but also for local driving detection and path planning.

One-dimensional (1D) models are commonly employed to study the performances of turbocharged engine. Manufacturers' provided steady turbomachinery maps are usually utilized, although they operate in unsteady conditions as a consequence of pressure pulses propagating into the intake and exhaust systems. This may lead to some inaccuracies in the engine-turbocharger matching calculations, which may be solved through the introduction of proper time-delays (virtual pipe corrections). These drawbacks, however, became more relevant when engine operates under low speed and high load conditions, or during a transient maneuver, because of possibilities of compressor surging.

Sound source localization techniques in a car interior are hampered by the fact that the cavity usually is governed by a high number of (in)coherent sources and reflections. In the acoustic near field, particle velocity based intensity probes have been demonstrated to be not susceptible to these reflections allowing the individual panel contributions of these (in)coherent sources to be accurately determined. In the acoustic far field (spherical) beam forming techniques have been used outdoors in the free field, which analyze the directional resolution of a sound field incident on the array. Recently these techniques have also been applied inside cars, assuming that sound travels in a straight path from the source to the receivers. However, there is quite some evidence that sound waves do not travel in a straight line.

In engine development, the ‘mapping’ task involves producing tables and models, which define an engine's operating characteristics. Complicated engines with multiple continuously variable valvetrain mechanisms, variable compression ratio or stratified direct injection become increasingly difficult and time consuming to characterise as the number of degrees of freedom rise. ‘Model Based Calibration” tools have been developed by various companies which use Design of Experiment (DoE) techniques to improve data quality and reduce testing time. This paper describes work carried out to determine the practical advantages and limitations of different tools when applied to a high degree of freedom characterization and optimization task. The conclusions will indicate that the model-based/DoE techniques are powerful tools in many situations but require careful application to stratified engines in particular.

J1939-based networks are used in most of the in-vehicle networks in trucks and buses and in some off-road vehicles. In addition, some off-highway vehicles such as agriculture and forestry machines and military vehicles are equipped with J1939-based networks. Because in Europe, many of the super-construction manufacturers like to use off-the-shelf, price-competitive devices originally developed for other applications fields, they like to buy CANopen-based modules. CANopen is a standardized CAN-based application layer and profile specification. In order to standardize the gateway functionality, a CANopen device profile for J1939 truck gateway is introduced.

This paper presents a decoupled solution for mapping and validating complex and dynamic user interfaces (UI). Creating unique and satisfying user experiences are becoming the focus of products whereas digital user interfaces are a big part of this delivery. This tendency is coming to complex real-time systems, thus, growing the need of a proper validation of digital UIs considering its intrinsic requirements and limitations. The previous framework that ran the touchscreen tests required changes in case of UI updates while the matrix-like structure proposed gives a correlation between all to all clickable objects thus mapping all possible pathways to the many different screens.

This work presents an experimental procedure to find the best operating point for a spark ignition engine controlled by a general Engine Management System. The ECU control allows changing the ignition and fuel injection timing as a function of load and rotational speed, beyond configuring the whole system according to the sensors and actuators types. The ignition dwell time and the best moment to start the injection fuel can be controlled accurately by this system. In addition, this electronic system allows adjustments in real time with engine installed onto a dynamometric test stand. This work describes the experimental apparatus, sensors characteristics used and also the methodology to accomplish the adjustments in the ECU maps, seeking to obtain the best performance. Comparison performance data for the standard engine and the proposed configuration are presented here, showing a 50% gain for a spark ignition engine of 1300 cm3, four cylinders in line, and 16 valves.

Automobile manufacturers have experienced increasing consumer and regulatory pressure to improve fuel efficiency and crashworthiness while simultaneously decreasing overall vehicle body weight. As such, the use of advanced high strength steels (AHSS) in body panels and other structural elements is becoming more and more prevalent because these advanced materials present an economical and elegant solution to the problem. To ensure the quality and safety of AHSS components, residual stress (RS) specifications (among others) have been introduced with the intent to minimize failures experienced both in the field and during production. Moreover, when welding processes are applied to AHSS components, the localized loss of ductility in combination with tensile RS can result in localized cracking, distortion, and/or failures.

Residual stress plays an important role in fatigue life resistance of automotive components. Due to the complex nature and combination of multiple processes used in the manufacturing of these components the residual stresses present may not always be uniform. Typically most components contain both surface and sub-surface stress gradients. This leads us to the conclusion that characterizing the residual stress at one location will not generate a sufficient understanding of the stresses present. Characterizing and understanding the stress gradients will help to manage the fatigue life of various components as well as help establish proper quality control practices to ensure the presence of beneficial residual stresses at critical locations.

A recent extension of the Controller Area Network (CAN) protocol allows an efficient mapping of the SAE J1850 data link messages defined by SAE J2178 into the CAN message format. Compatibility between J1850 and CAN at the message header level allows designers to use the same messages and overall communications strategy for both today's medium speed SAE Class B links and tomorrow's high speed Class C bus applications. This paper presents a proposed mapping of SAE J2178 messages into extended format CAN messages and explains the benefits of this approach for vehicle systems developers.

The comparison of CFD predictions with aerodynamic heating data must be preceded by a careful analysis of the experimental data. Of primary interest is the location of transition since boundary layer state is still a user input for most CFD codes and an error here can result in large variations between the numerical and experimental results. Transition can usually be located by observing the associated sharp rise in surface heating rate with increasing Reynolds number. However, on complex vehicles the distributions of laminar, transitional, and turbulent flow will also be complex, and a rise in heating rate may be produced by flow phenomena other than transition. This paper reviews the method used to determine boundary layer state using experimental surface pressure and heat transfer data.