Distributed Real-time Vehicle Validation

Due to the increasing complexity of embedded systems and software in vehicles, the automotive industry faces an increasing need for testing and verification of components and subsystems under realistic conditions. At the same time, development cycles must be shortened in order for vehicle manufacturers to be competitive on the global market. Consequently, an increased amount of testing and verification must be performed in less time. However, simply increasing the volume of the testing can be prohibitively costly, implying that the testing and verification processes must be made more efficient, reducing the need for more prototypes. This paper presents a concept for distributed testing and verification of vehicles in real time, with the aim of improving the efficiency of testing and verification. Through a novel combination of software tools for distributed collaborative engineering, real-time simulation, visualization, and black box simulation, a system is realised that makes it possible for vehicle manufacturers and their subcontractors to work more concurrently and efficiently with testing and validation. An early prototype implementation of the system is decribed, and future developement plans for the system is presented. The main software components that the system is built upon are ADAMS/Car RealTime, Matlab/Simulink and a Java-based real-time visualization module, originally developed for the gaming industry. One of the main benefits of the concept is that different disciplines involved in the product development process can use the system to enhance the concurrency between them. Control systems and mechanical engineers can view ongoing tests in real time and change designs, re-simulate and influence ongoing tests in a distributed and efficient way. Through advanced visualization of simulation results and measurement data, the engineers can get a clearer view on how the system or product behaves, improving the quality of the validation process. The concept for distributed real-time simulation and visualization described in this paper will gather more information in the early stages of product development. Furthermore, it will speed up the product development process due to its real-time nature. The fact that engineers can stay at their home office and only follow the test when it is needed will enhance their efficiency. INTRODUCTION A clear trend in the automotive industry is that the manufacturers outsource more development work to subcontractors. Consequently, the overall quality of the finished product will depend on how well the automotive companies and the subcontractors work together in the development processes. Lack of harmonization between the subcontractors and the automotive company – but also between different development departments at the manufacturer – causes expensive errors. Therefore, methods and tools have to be developed to support the whole development process and these have to be easy to work with, in order to be applicable [1, 2]. The need for validation of vehicles has been increasing during the resent years, mainly due to the increasingly complex electronic control systems developed for the vehicles. A lot of time is to validation, in order to manufacture reliable and safe systems. To quote Professor Alberto Sangiovanni Vincentelli [3], “It is no wonder that more than 30% of severe malfunctions in automobiles are originated by faulty software. We need a new system science to deal with the digital abstraction and the physical world in a unified way.” This paper suggests methods and tools for reducing leadtimes in the validation phases of product development (PD). It also exemplifies how we can cope with the digital abstraction and the physical world.