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As the need for performance and safety of vehicles increases, the need for better chassis controls increases.
Pi Shurlok has been working in the chassis control domain for more than six years. We have provided various chassis control solutions (including, hardware, software, and calibration) for North American and European Tier 1s, OEMs, and defence applications. We have also developed the products and the Intellectual Property needed to meet the current and future needs of these customers.
Our OpenECU range of controllers includes aspects aimed specifically at chassis control applications.
Worldwide experience
There are different emissions standards worldwide and similarly, there are different chassis requirements worldwide. Pi Shurlok has offices in the United States, the United Kingdom and South Africa and this ensures that we have experience of the requirements in different market places worldwide.
Pi Shurlok is unique in the chassis control arena in that we have leveraged our experience in safety critical systems and software design to provide novel, cost competitive systems on a wide range of chassis and ride control technologies.
Chassis control can cover a broad spectrum of technologies and we have been fortunate to work with many leading OEMs and Tier 1s in developing new technologies, prototyping these systems and lending our production experience in commercializing these new technologies.
The following list of applications reflects the breadth of our experience in chassis control:
- Active damping control
- Automatic parking brake
- Driver selectable preset
- Active suspension control
- Leveling systems
- Air
- Hydraulic
- Active differential control
- Stability systems
- Yaw control
- Rollover control
- Traction control
- Active differential
Sustainability and cost
The big issues facing the automotive industry today are sustainability and cost and the industry is responding to them with a combination of:
- applying advanced technology in the premium sector and
- developing low cost entry level products for emerging markets.
In practice this means that both the complexity and systems integration requirements for chassis electronics are increasing:
more features for the premium sector and design optimization to drive down costs for emerging markets.
OEMs are alive to the huge potential of advanced chassis electronics technology and its effect on brand and vehicle attributes. Vehicle yaw control, for example, may involve several major chassis sub-systems, such as, brakes, steering, active suspension handling balance and active drivelines. The resultant system has such a large impact on the possible vehicle behaviour that safety considerations become very important and safety critical behavior is no longer only the domain of the brakes sub-system.
The introduction of hybrid powertrain technology further complicates the overall integration task as the vehicle specification, attribute management and control moves to another level. Chassis electronics attributes like traction and stability control can't operate in isolation when paired with longitudinal energy management.
Future challenges involve more advanced driver aids, such as where the vehicle begins to 'automate' driving, particularly at limiting conditions to improve safety. Lane keeping and collision avoidance are two current features that act through the advanced chassis electronics steering actuators. Each new feature on the vehicle invariably needs some degree of integration with the chassis electronics.
We are well placed to help the industry navigate its way through the chassis electronics minefield with our experience in:
- Architecture design
- Control engineering
- Systems integration
- Hardware design and supply
- Safety critical systems development
A step change in the way chassis electronics systems are designed and integrated comes with the adoption of new multiplex technologies and standards, such as FlexRay™ and AUTOSAR. Pi Shurlok has extensive experience working with evolving automotive technologies and standards such as these. |