
Design cars like planes, use them like cellphones
On the other hand, the complexity inherent in developing connected cars and autonomous driving is so dire that cars of tomorrow will need to be designed more like airplanes.
James Buczkowski, Henry Ford technical fellow and director for EE systems at Ford Motor Co., came to the Design Automation Conference in San Francisco this week and issued a "call for action."
In a dual keynote speech with Jim Tung, MathWorks fellow at MathWorks, the Ford executive concluded that, without tools and methods that keep up with the automotive design challenges, a car’s complexity will just keep growing. No longer will consumers be able to say: "It just works."
To illustrate the dilemma, Buczkowski shared a slide comparing automobiles with smartphones and airplanes in terms of consumer expectation, production volume, product lifetime, operating environment, maintenance required, and regulation.
Buczkowski said the biggest difference between cars and cellphones is "cycle time." Normally, it takes 24-48 months to develop a new car, and its platform lasts about 10 years, with "freshening in between." Development of a car model begins two or more years before the start of production.
What makes cars more like consumer electronics products is the fact that both need to be affordable, he said. However, if you compare 4 million cars that are sold in a year with the 4 million smartphones that can be snatched up over a weekend, the scale is hardly the same. Carmakers can’t just keep adding more features and increasing the cost, either. Perhaps more importantly, cars must be designed for both 16-year-olds and 60-year-olds.
Despite these variances, CE products and cars are similar, because they both need to survive on slim profit margins in a very competitive market.
Where the consumer electronics and automotive industries radically diverge is in regulatory requirements. Consumers don’t always understand such issues, Buczkowski said, and regulations are imposed, not just for safety purposes, but also to minimize driver distraction. The pressure on the automobile industry for emissions control and fuel economy is also paramount.
Two themes
During the keynote speech, Buczkowski said carmakers are focusing on two themes: assisted/automated/autonomous driving and fully connected mobility.
In transforming automobile design from being driver-centric to assisted and autonomous, the keys are the fusion of sensors and a growing amount of software. The software must be able to mediate and manage interactions among different functions. In an adaptive cruise control function, for example, electronic stability and braking systems need to interact in an optimized manner.
In the connected vehicle, carmakers are increasingly seeing the car as "another machine" connected to the Internet, he said. It must maintain optimum connectivity by using cellular, WiFi, and other networks, and it must be able to use onboard/offboard data while dynamically connecting to data sources and services.
Putting those two themes together, automotive engineers face the challenge of synthesizing electronics, packaging materials, controls software, embedded software, and cloud services. To pull it off, a "model-based and system approach" is becoming a critical design discipline, said Jim Tung of MathWorks.
He cited the example of developing a car that trims fuel consumption while meeting performance objectives. First, engineers must look at the car’s transmission and its control algorithms.
Under the systems approach, they calculate fuel use, probe parameter values, and develop an optimization algorithm. In system-level modeling, if done right, engineers explore different design options and complete software optimization at the model level, even before they generate code.
In summary, the two keynote speakers stressed that the pairing of electronics and software is becoming increasingly important. The heavy use of electronics will allow automotive engineers to follow Moore’s Law while affording the opportunity for more capability designed in to future models.
The two speakers agreed that software is the key. Software enables fusion of data, signals and experiences, Buczkowski said, but such integration creates "complex software, making its quality even more challenging."
Last but not least, "tools and processes is key," he said. The automotive industry will leverage ISO 26262 (the Functional Safety standard) to deliver "safety-critical systems." This will require "tools that help keep the automobile industry focused on creating, and not limiting the experience that customers want and need."
Functional safety standard
After the keynote speech, EE Times asked Buczkowski how far along the automobile industry is in establishing ISO 26262 certification programs for players throughout the supply chain — from chips, foundries, and software to tools, modules, subsystems, and the automobile itself.
He said a lot of work still must be done to certify the entire ecosystem for ISO 26262 and for tracing safety in software and systems. "But we are taking a cue from what the aircraft industry has done for their functional safety certification."
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