Functional Engineering Platform—A Continuous Approach Towards Function Development

Abstract

Over the last years, the developers of vehicle functions faced the challenge of increasing numbers of control units. This led to more and more complex network structures inside a vehicle. To be able to develop vehicle functions under these conditions, all relevant aspects for the function under development have to be considered in the simulation and testing. The methods to satisfy these challenges are Model-in-the-Loop (MiL), Software-in-the-Loop (SiL) and Hardware-in-the-Loop (HiL) simulation. These offer the possibility to develop and test a function in its relevant context inside a vehicle through certain development phases. With the upcoming strong trend towards autonomous driving the current methods of function development are not sufficient anymore. On the way to the ability to drive autonomously, there are many advanced driver assistant systems (ADAS) to be developed. These involve more and more information about the environment of a vehicle. In addition to data from sensors there will be data from other road users and the surrounding infrastructure that influence new vehicle functions via so-called Vehicle-to-X (V2X) communication. Additionally, the vehicle will be able to receive information out of a backend system, like cloud-infrastructures, via wireless local area network (WLAN) or mobile communications. As a result in the future the complexity will not be limited to the networking of control units inside a vehicle, but vehicles will be cross-linked among each other, with their environment and with the world. This ongoing progress makes it inevitable to develop a new approach towards function development for the automotive industry.