Abstract

Since the 1970s, one observes an exponential increase in the number of electronic systems that have gradually replaced those that are purely mechanical or hydraulic. The growing performance and reliability of hardware components and the possibilities brought by software technologies enabled implementing complex functions that improve the comfort of the vehicle’s occupants as well as their safety. In particular, one of the main purposes of electronic systems is to assist the driver to control the vehicle through functions related to the steering, traction (i.e., control of the driving torque), or braking such as the antilock braking system (ABS), electronic stability program (ESP), electric power steering (EPS), active suspensions, or engine control. Another reason for using electronic systems is to control devices in the body of a vehicle such as lights, wipers, doors, windows, as well as entertainment and communication equipment (e.g., radio, DVD, hand-free phones, navigation systems). More recently appeared a large set of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), often camera based, such as brake and park assistance, lane departure detection, night vision assistance with pedestrian recognition or suspension proactively scanning the road surface [55]. In the future, vehicles will become entities of large intelligent transportation systems [51], involving cooperation mechanisms [50] through car-to-car and car-to-infrastructure communications.