A communications protocol for a distributed vehicle control system

As a part of the Manufacturing Across the Curriculum initiative at Arizona State University, an autonomous vehicle system was developed by a multi-departmental team to study engineering design methodology in a complex inter-disciplinary environment. As a part of that effort, the Digital Systems Design group within the Department of Computer Science and Engineering designed a distributed vehicle control system to manage motor and sensor control systems on the vehicle, from active propulsion control to passive monitoring of dynamic vehicle parameters. This system presented several challenges to the designers, including real-time transmission constraints, diversity of message content, and a multi-level hierarchical control system. In this paper, we will describe the vehicle architecture and the message-passing communications protocol designed to support this environment.