Nowadays validation of anti-lock braking systems(ABS)relies mainly on a large amount of road tests.An altative means with higher efficiency is employing the hardware-in-the-loop simulation(HILS)system to substitute part of road tests for designing,testing,and tuning electronic control units(ECUs)of ABS.Most HILS systems for ABS use expensive digital signal processor hardware and special purpose software,and some fail-safe functions with regard to wheel speeds cannot be evaluated since artificial wheel speed signals are usually provided.In this paper,a low-cost ABS HILS test bench is developed and used for validating the anti-lock braking performance and tuning control parameters of ABS controllers.Another important merit of the proposed test bench is that it can comprehensively evaluate the fail-safe functions with regard to wheel speed signals since real tone rings and sensors are integrated in the bench.A 5-DOF vehicle model with consideration of longitudinal load transfer is used to calculate tire forces,wheel speeds and vehicle speed.Each of the four real-time wheel speed signal generators consists of a servo motor plus a ring gear,which has sufficient dynamic response ability to emulate the rapid changes of the wheel speeds under strict braking conditions of very slippery roads.The simulation of braking tests under different road adhesion coefficients using the HILS test bench is run,and results show that it can evaluate the anti-lock braking performance of ABS and partly the fail-safe functions.This HILS system can also be used in such applications as durability test,benchmarking and comparison between different ECUs.The test bench developed not only has a relatively low cost,but also can be used to validate the wheel speed-related ECU design and all its fail-safe functions,and a rapid testing and proving platform with a high efficiency for research and development of the automotive ABS is therefore provided.