This note presents an embedded automatic control strategy for a low
consumption vehicle equipped with an "on/off" engine. The main difficulties are
the hybrid nature of the dynamics, the non smoothness of the dynamics of each
mode, the uncertain environment, the fast changing dynamics, and low cost/ low
consumption constraints for the control device. Human drivers of such vehicles
frequently use an oscillating strategy, letting the velocity evolve between
fixed lower and upper bounds. We present a general justification of this very
simple and efficient strategy, that happens to be optimal for autonomous
dynamics, robust and easily adaptable for real-time control strategy. Effective
implementation in a competition prototype involved in low-consumption races
shows that automatic velocity control achieves performances comparable with the
results of trained human drivers. Major advantages of automatic control are
improved robustness and safety. The total average power consumption for the
control device is less than 10 mW
