Today’s automotive systems are more complex, smarter and more autonomous than ever before, featuring functionality that no one could have imagined 10 years ago. Advanced sensors and electronics control everything from a vehicle’s speed and position to its entertainment and communications technologies. Radar, cameras and other sophisticated electronics are increasingly being incorporated into consumer vehicles.
In fact, today, more than 60 percent of a car’s cost comes from its advanced electronics and software systems. Since many of the functions guided by electronic systems are mission-critical, it’s essential that all automotive systems work together with complete reliability. The tens of millions of lines of software code that control these systems must be flawless.
This presents a challenge for automotive systems engineers, since many of the technology systems and components are sourced from different suppliers. Engineers are challenged with the critical task of creating a robust, fail-safe system architecture, complete with controls that ensure the system’s consistent operation.
Most automotive systems engineering teams have been relying on manual processes, and generic tools such as Microsoft Excel™, to generate and verify this architecture. Because these tools are not created specifically for the task of automotive systems design, they do not support rapid or consistent engineering results. The associated manual processes can be extremely time-consuming and are subject to human error.
Support for Automotive Industry AUTOSAR Standard
In 2003, a network of leaders in the worldwide automotive industry came together to create AUTOSAR (AUTomotive Open System ARchitecture) — a set of standards that define an open software architecture for automotive electronics.
AUTOSAR is a standard that’s gaining momentum worldwide and that promotes the standardization and reuse of automotive embedded software, electric and electronic components. AUTOSAR’s objectives are modularity and configurability. It defines a layered software architecture allowing integration of electronic control units (ECU) with configurability. And it enables function reuse from different suppliers. Standardized interfaces are defined between each layer, and standardized datatypes are defined. All entities connected to this AUTOSAR Runtime Environment (RTE) must comply to the AUTOSAR specification to ensure integration of the user specific software.
The AUTOSAR architecture consist of:
- Software components (SWC) for the application
- Basic software components for low-level services
- And a Runtime Environment
The ANSYS SCADE tools, and more specifically the brand new ANSYS SCADE Automotive Package, are used to design the software components, that are the application parts. From the ANSYS SCADE model, code can be generated in compliance with the AUTOSAR RTE required interfaces.
The detailed flow with ANSYS SCADE is as follows:
- It starts with the AUTOSAR application description for the software components to be implemented, using standard ARXML notation, by the system architecture teams
- The AUTOSAR model is imported into SCADE Architect, in which additional information related to the software architecture implementation can be added, by the software architecture teams
- AUTOSAR “runnables” are parts — software functions — of the SCADE model, that will be the running software, they are synchronized with SCADE Suite. As the synchronization is bi-directional, it ensures full consistency at any time between the software architecture and the implementation interfaces
- The embedded software model behavior is designed in SCADE Suite and the ISO 26262 certifiable code is automatically produced with SCADE Suite KCG code generator, by the software engineering teams
- Using that generated code, and additional AUTOSAR architecture level information, the AUTOSAR compliance wrapping code is also automatically generated by the SCADE Automotive Package, and used by the system/software integration teams to deploy on the AUTOSAR platform
I encourage you to learn more about AUTOSAR and the SCADE Automotive Package by having a quick look at this demo video.
Driving Toward the Future
Such a model-based approach to automotive system and embedded software design promises a range of benefits, including a significant increase in the productivity of engineering staff. As designers rely on an advanced tool to manage their code generation and verification tasks, new systems architectures can be launched much more rapidly.
Just as automotive electronics capabilities have advanced rapidly, the solutions used to design electronics systems should also reflect the latest thinking and best-in-class technology. Already proven effective in mission-critical applications such as aviation, nuclear power and rail transportation, ANSYS SCADE model-based solutions for generating control software code can now be applied in the global automotive industry. In the race to perfect autonomous vehicles, the new level of speed and efficiency enabled by such tools can help separate the leaders from the followers.
Join us for a webinar on March 7 to learn more about AUTOSAR and ANSYS SCADE 18.
The post Driving Toward the Future with AUTOSAR Compliant Software appeared first on ANSYS.