Design of Emergency Brake System for Autonomous Electric Racing Vehicle

In recent years, advanced autonomous systems have significantly infiltrated the automotive sector with the aim to enhance safety of road traffic. Besides the other Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) [1], various systems for the support of safety braking are already frequent in common vehicles. This paper introduces the Emergency Braking System (EBS) designed as an electro-pneumatic system with compressed air used as passive energy storage. At the pneumatic circuit’s level, a normally opened solenoid actuating valve is responsible for switching between the armed state and braked state. The EBS activation directly invokes the brake power of hydraulic brake circuits to immediately stop the vehicle in case of power supply loss, a press of the Remote Emergency Switch (RES) button, or when error state is detected during autonomous operation. The error might be detected by Autonomous System (AS) or the supervisor operating Remote Emergency Switch (RES). Formula Student competition rules puts high demands on the performance and safety of the whole braking system. A design proposed in the paper reflects these requirements, as well as the space constraints of the vehicle itself. A series of experiment scenarios validates the functionality, performance, and safety of the EBS.