Latest Trends In Automotive Electronic Systems - Highway Meets Off-Highway?

Abstract

The rapid development of electronic systems in automotive vehicles has been driven for decades by constantly growing requirements of legislation for environmental protection, as well as rising demands of the end-user to improve fuel economy, safety, driving comfort and driving excitement. The manufacturers of mobile work machines also see themselves increasingly confronted with these requirements. Can Robert Bosch GmbH use the technical experiences from automobiles also in this area to efficiently develop high-quality electronic systems, which are future-oriented and be able to flexibly adapt the systems to different platforms? The number of calibration parameters for example in an engine management system has risen within the last 20 years from a few hundred to over 7000. Therefore, the engineering effort for software and their calibration has increased dramatically. In the meantime for manufacturers of vehicles with low volumes, the engineering costs are comparable with the actual cost for the system components. Therefore, the future challenge will be the re-use of software functions engineered by manufacturers and suppliers for different vehicles and systems. In the automotive industry this attempt is being undertaken by different companies under the name AUTOSAR. Additionally, the software development is done in compliance to standards like CMMI or SPICE which ensure a consistent, high quality product. The exchange of information between control units makes the interaction of the systems much more complex and asks for more efficient, faster data communication systems by new standards, such as the bus system FlexRay. When electronic devices are viewed with a holistic approach, a large potential is evident for manufactures and their end-user.