waterlooSPEED started as an extremely ambitious fourth year design project. Many have commented that the ground covered by this initiative should have been the topic of multiple graduate level degrees. Inspiration for this undertaking originated from a passion for automobiles combined with a fascination for automation, control and taking the current state of the art and pushing it forward.

The group of four Systems Design Engineering undergraduate students at the University of Waterloo committed their senior year (8 months) to redesigning the modern car engine control unit (ECU). Our goal was to build an FPGA-based engine control system for a 2002 Volkswagen Jetta 1.8T using a National Instruments CompactRIO embedded system and a LabVIEW development environment. This will result in the world's most advanced engine computer on the road today. This engine computer will serve as a replacement for the vehicle?s factory supplied ECU, and will allow for complete adjustability of the engine's basic operating principle and infinite tuning in order to improve performance and fuel efficiency. This platform can be used to develop an OEM ECU and slash time to market drastically, saving thousands in development time.

For more technical detail refer to our presentation slides that can be viewed here from NIWeek 2007.

The project process required an initial reverse engineering process to determine base fuel and timing maps which needed to be carefully planned and executed in a systematic way. We developed a method to intercept the communication between the factory suppled ECU and engine and record, sort and analyze it. This "breakout box" was key to the reverse engineering phase and later allowed us to control the engine with the simple flip of a few switches. With a functional understanding of the engine mapped, we turned to a time proven speed-density formulation to calculate injected fuel mass. The prototype has been demonstrated at NIWeek 2007 (Austin, Texas), Ontario Centre Of Excellente's Innovation Showcase at Explorations 2007 (Toronto, Ontario) and SAE World Congress 2007 (Detroit, Michigan). Numerous media outlets are planning features soon. This project showcases both core NI products and products leveraging NI technology as well as the academic abilities of the University of Waterloo.

UW Daily Bulletin - July 31st, 2007

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This is only the beginning of the demo vehicle's development. As new technologies emerge you will find them on this daily driven Volkswagen bringing the future of the modern car engine to today.