During the 3rd term in my study i decided to do some work for the E-Power Racing Team of the technical University of Graz / Austria.

First job: develop a micro controller system to measure and approve pedal travel and steering angle, also called X-by-Wire System.  “Fault tolerant and fail safe operation” is essential for cars, controlled with such systems.

Before the project start the micro controller Infineon xc2336B was choosen. Infineon is one of our main sponsors so we took controllers and other IC’s from Infineon. Very important is the mentioned fault tolerant and fail safe operation. The throttle pedal travel should be measured by redundant sensors and if one sensor fails because of cable break, sensor internal failure or shortcuts on any signal or supply wire, other sensors should not be affected. If redundancy of measurement is lost, the car has to be shutdown immediately. So we decided to use rotational magnetic field encoders from melexis, build up in a housing by megatron sensors.