Design and Implementation of Power Management Systems for Scaled-Down Autonomous Electric Vehicles

Automation holds the potential to realize the acme of electric vehicles in transportation electrification by optimizing energy utilization and promoting cooperation with different elements of the transportation ecosystem to facilitate vehicle-to-everything (V2X) features. Since fully autonomous vehicles and V2X infrastructure are in their early stages, scaled-down experimentation offers a solution to expedite the development of algorithms and devising strategies. This paper details the development of essential features for efficient power management and V2X capabilities in LiPo-powered scaled-down autonomous electric vehicles (AEVs), such as bidirectional power transfer, battery monitoring, electrical safety, and reliable power supplies. Further, we introduce a novel power system architecture to incorporate these necessities and other vital features such as charging and vehicle ON-OFF. We implement the architecture, systems, and features in our self-developed one-tenth-scale AEV, DEFT, featuring precise actuators, enhanced system state measurement sensors, robust mechanisms, autonomous and manual driving, and V2X communication. We test the developed power management systems through DEFT’s operations and demonstrate the V2X capability with a vehicle-to-load example. The impact of this work lies primarily in establishing a standardized approach to develop power management systems for scaled-down AEVs and their V2X power sharing capabilities, providing a crucial tool for bridging the gap between simulations and real-world experiments.