Integrating Physical Brake Hardware with CarMaker via Vector VT System

Coding & Integration
1

We are currently working on test bench using IPG CarMaker integrated with Vector CANoe and the VT System. I am glad to report that the basic communication interface between CarMaker and the VT System is already successfully established.

We are now moving to the next phase of our project: physically integrating our brake hardware component into the loop. Our goal is to establish a bi-directional communication simulation where:

  1. Hardware to Simulation: We want to read physical sensor data (e.g., brake pressure/torque) from our real hardware via the VT System and inject it into CarMaker to act as the “ground truth” input for the vehicle dynamics.

  2. Simulation to Hardware: We are using the output simulated vehicle states (e.g., wheel speeds, accelerations, vehicle speed) from CarMaker to serve as inputs or targets for our physical hardware.

To achieve this, we are looking for the best-practice workflow and have a few specific questions:

  • HydHIL Model Configuration: We noticed the HydHIL brake model in CarMaker, which seems perfectly suited for this application. Could you provide a workflow guide, documentation, or an example on how to properly configure the HydHIL controller? How exactly do we bypass the internal hydraulic calculations to force CarMaker to use our physical hardware’s data as the absolute ground truth?

  • C-Code vs. DVA: What is your recommended approach for this signal mapping? Should we map our VT System inputs/outputs directly inside IO.c and assign them to the Brake module (or VehicleControl) via User.c? Or is it better to handle this via Direct Variable Access (DVA) directly through the CANoe integration?

Any application notes, example projects, or step-by-step guides regarding Brake-in-the-Loop (HydHIL) integration with Vector tools would be highly appreciated.

Thank you in advance for your time and support.