The paper presents a control strategy for an automotive electronic throttle, a device used to regulate the power produced by spark-ignition engines. Controlling the electronic throttle body is a difficult task because the throttle accounts strong nonlinearities. The difficulty increases when the control works through communication networks subject to random delay. In this paper, we revisit the Smith-predictor control, and show how to adapt it for controlling the electronic throttle body over a delay-driven network. Experiments were carried out in a laboratory, and the corresponding data indicate the benefits of our approach for applications.

Peer Reviewed