The cars used by Zenuity for prototyping software for autonomous driving (AD) needs a convenient way for the driver to activate and deactivate AD functionality. Since the cars were equipped with shifting paddles, repurposing them to act as AD activation paddles had become a compelling option.

The goal of this thesis was to design an electronic control unit (ECU) to read the analog value of each paddle and transmit them digitally to an industry PC already implemented in the vehicle. In order to improve the human to machine interface, the paddle ECU also had to control two different LED indicators to show the status of the AD system to the driver as different color codes.

A prototype of the ECU has been built on a PCB (printed circuit board) that consists of a microcontroller and hardware for it to interface with paddles, indicators and for communication with the industry PC. The prototype was tested and the resulting ECU has been shown to work successfully, fulfilling all the requirements. In particular it can correctly read the status of each paddle, control the indicators, as well as communicate with the industry PC.