Energy Reserve Management in Automobile Airbag Control Unit

Abstract

Energy management in electric vehicles is one prominent aspect in terms of enhancing mileage and economy. Airbag Control Units (ACUs) are ECUs (Electronic Control Units) which decide on the deployment of airbags by processing the information (crash input) from peripheral and internal sensors in the scenario of an unavoidable crash. The energy reserve capacitors used in the ACU (Airbag Control Unit) are provided so that once a crash event occurs and Loss of Battery (LOB) occurs in turn, the airbags can still be powered with their help as an emergency supply system. The disadvantage of limited time availability of the ERC as a power source makes it defective in cases of delayed deployment needs. These needs are cases which are further discussed in the introduction. This work is intended to research on a novel algorithm which coordinates between three alternative power sources, namely the main battery, ERC and a backup battery, to make the system more compatible to various unattended crash scenarios and in systems which utilize manual input as determining factor for deployment loops. Another parallel objective of this work resides in the application and analysis of fuzzy-logic based crash classification for enhanced performance and speed.