Agricultural vehicles, such as tractors, combines, and harvesters, are following the trend of commercial vehicles with a transition from diesel to electric propulsion. Seen as an integrated system, a full-electric tractor is a complex machine with many systems that have to be interconnected for efficient functionality; thus, the need for a central control unit arises. The purpose of this article is to present an electronic control unit that interconnects the powertrain, the hydraulic systems, and the auxiliary systems of a full-electric tractor, with an emphasis on optimization through software design. The article describes the hardware of the electronic control unit and the software state diagrams necessary to implement the functions required by the electric tractor. The results of this article show how, through software optimization, the performances of the tractor can be improved, with parameters such as the response time of the various equipment being a useful indicator of such an improvement. Furthermore, the implementation of trip memory and an easy-to-use human–machine interface allows for easy diagnostic of the electric tractor.

LiDAR sensors are needed for use in vehicular applications, particularly due to their good behavior in low-light environments, as they represent a possible solution for the safety systems of vehicles that have a long braking distance, such as trams. The testing of long-range LiDAR dynamic responses is very important for vehicle applications because of the presence of difficult operation conditions, such as different weather conditions or fake targets between the sensor and the tracked vehicle. The goal of the authors in this paper was to develop an experimental model for indoor testing, using a scaled vehicle that can measure the distances and the speeds relative to a fixed or a moving obstacle. This model, containing a LiDAR sensor, was developed to operate at variable speeds, at which the software functions were validated by repeated tests. Once the software procedures are validated, they can be applied on the full-scale model. The findings of this research include the validation of the frontal distance and relative speed measurement methodology, in addition to the validation of the independence of the measurements to the color of the obstacle and to the ambient light.

The safety of vehicles is one of the major goals of driving automation. The safety distance is longer for rail vehicles such as trams because of the adherence limitations of the wheel-to-rail system. The major issues of fixed frontal sensing are fake target detection, blind spots related to rail slopes, curves, and random changes in the target’s illumination or reflectivity. In this experimental study, distance measurements were performed using a scaled tram model equipped with a LiDAR sensor with a narrow field of view, under different conditions of illumination, size, and reflectivity of the target objects, and using different track configurations, to evaluate the effectiveness of such sensors in collision-avoidance systems for rail applications. The experimental findings are underlining the sensor’s sensitivity to fake targets, objects in the sensor’s blind spots, and special optical interferences, which are important for evaluating long-range LiDAR capabilities in sensing safety distance for vehicles. The conclusions can help developers to produce a dedicated colliding prevention system for trams and to identify the zones with high risk in the track where additional protection methods should be used. The LiDAR sensor must be used in conjunction with additional sensors to perform all the security tasks of an anti-colliding system for the tram.

Electric boats are evolving, following the trend of imposing electric powered vehicles in all transportation solutions. For a research project, a reed and aquatic weed harvester, the author’s goal is to develop an experimental electrical vehicle aimed at solving several particular problems such as: small speed, big throttle, high maneuverability, big load capacity, small draught and affordable cost. The solution comprises of one electric motor powered by a converter supplied from Li-Ion batteries, which drives a hydraulic pump for simultaneous operation of two lateral-placed paddle wheels and one complex mechanism of cutter and conveyor. The control system of this vehicle consists of one remote controller, with bidirectional radio communication to three on-board controllers used for the management of the electro-hydraulic actuators, the electric motor and the battery storage system. The hardware and the software architectures are presented, underlining the automated operations designed to increase the safety, the maneuverability and the predictability of the vehicle. The advantages of the use of control electronics is the increasing operability of the vehicle by supervising the available stored energy and the predicted consumption of energy, the fast and remote assistance in case of operational failure using online diagnose and the operation optimization by selecting the best load profile for the cutter and for the paddles. The results of this research are the validation of the proposed hardware and software architectures used for the control of an electro-hydraulic vehicle and the feasibility of using radio communication and remote diagnose for vehicle control.