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Is it possible to control the braking system and speed limiting of a car using a microcontroller? Please explain.

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Are you sure you want to fiddle with you car's brakes? I know for a fact that I wouldn't. – jippie May 26 '12 at 6:41
Real car or RC car? – Turbo J May 26 '12 at 17:33

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They are being controlled by a microcontroller. Think of ABS for instance. This must be the part of the car where the most time and money was spent during development to get the highest reliability. You don't want to mess with that. Stay away from it.

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stevenvh, I agree you have lots of experience in automobil wiring and electronics. So I expect a complete answer from you. I think he is asking how to sniff the CAN bus and take the control to his hand, something crazy like that. – sandun dhammika May 26 '12 at 6:59
Can u assist how to do that?? – PradeepBhati May 26 '12 at 7:01
you want to hack CAN bus? stevenvh is the person , you probably hire him :P – sandun dhammika May 26 '12 at 7:05
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I can see advantages in computer control. It's fine as long as it's tested and none of the primary functions can be prohibited. Also note that in your example, turning lights via computers, can be a cheaper and more reliable implementation. I believe there are some regulations in countries that force the car to put on warning lights when it makes an emergency stop. How convenient they don't have to use another relay or something, but can just send a message 'turn on warning lights'. – Hans May 26 '12 at 9:12
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I don't know of any consumer automobile that is "brake by wire" -- my '99 VW Passat's accelerator is done completely electronically, but the steering and braking are still mechanical (with hydraulic assist). ABS is an add-on to the mechanical brakes which electronically releases brake pressure in rapid pulses to prevent the wheels from locking up, but it's still regular hydraulic brakes. – Andrew Kohlsmith May 26 '12 at 14:17
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up vote 0 down vote

There are several kind of breaks, modern cars are hybrid, and they extract kinetic energy and store it in batteries as electricity.

On trains, they have eddy current breakers. So it's quite possible to control the breaking system using micro-controller. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddy_current_brake

If you talking about a RC car, then eddy current method is quite easy to implement. Just simply short the motor terminals over a load.

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