Control-over-the-air (COTA) for automotive comfort functions

The switch to service-oriented architectures in the automotive sector offers the opportunity to address key industry challenges, such as the reusability of hardware and software components, and the more efficient integration and maintainability of digital functions. The service-oriented architecture also provides the basis for the implementation of cloud-based vehicle software components. Offloading to the cloud is an upcoming option for compute-intensive functions to satisfy high resource demands. Advanced control mechanisms, such as model predictive control represent a particular component that requires high computing resources. Against this background, the overarching aim of this study is to investigate the control-over-the-air approach using the example of heating,ventilation, and air-conditioning control of battery electric buses. For this purpose, a hardware setup was used to assess the suitability of cloud-based control and investigate the need for a fallback in the vehicle and potential energy savings through offloading.