Emissions Research and Measurement Section of Air Quality Research Division is a Canadian national leader in measuring emissions from vehicles, engines and equipment powered by the internal combustion processes. The section provides state of the art vehicle dynamometers and test facilities for testing heavy and light duty vehicles.

When adding a simulation and control system for an all wheel drive dynamometer, Environment Canada awarded a contract to Innosiv Engineering to develop the software/hardware for this automations system.

The vehicle to be tested is placed with its wheels on the front and rear rolls of the dynamometer.  As an operator drives the vehicle, the automation system measures vehicle speed, acceleration and torque while controlling the two DC motors. The motors are controlled to accurately simulate the road resistance and aerodynamic drag as if the vehicle was driven on a road.

Equipped with advanced sampling and analysis equipment, the facility thus allows characterizing the vehicle emission and studying the effectiveness of alternative fuels amongst many other research uses.

Innosiv chose National Instruments compact RIO (cRIO) as the data acquisition and control platform for this application. While presenting a small footprint, cRIO with its FPGA backend and a high power real time controller provides a cost effective and yet technically advanced hardware. The cRIO controller operates in real time and is interfaced to a Windows desktop using Etherenet for all user interface and data logging tasks.