In order to achieve successful results in the control courses for a multidisciplinary audience, a high abstraction layer at programming is required. This abstraction is provided by a custom developed rapid control prototyping system that enables the usage of model based design techniques to control real plants. Model based design is focused on the research and development of the control algorithm, system identification and plant modelling. The usage of the proposed embedded rapid control prototyping system eliminates completely the need for low level input/output control hardware configuration and debugging, making the system capable to be used by the intended multidisciplinary audience, since model based design focuses on design and analysis techniques and shows the relationships between control theory and real controller implementation issues. Several controllable real plants are ready to be used by students, from Bachelor, Master Thesis and Ph.D. degrees. They come from many engineering fields including mechanical, electrical... Also the common drawbacks of commercial rapid control prototyping systems are avoided thanks to the customized low cost rapid control prototyping system presented in this article.

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Sistema Avanzado de Protipado Rápido para Control en la Educación en Ingeniería para grupos Multidisciplinares

In this paper, we present a tool enhancement that allows an effective transition from the system level development phase to the software level development phase of a tool-supported safety engineering workflow aligned with the automotive functional safety standard ISO 26262. The tool enhancement has capabilities for model generation and code generation. Whereas the generation of Simulink models supports the development of application software, the configuration and generation of safety drivers supports the development of the basic software required for initialization, runtime fault detection and error handling. We describe the safety engineering workflow and its supporting tool chain including the tool enhancement. Moreover we demonstrate that the enhancement supports the transition from the system level development phase to the software level development phase using the case study of a hybrid electric vehicle development.

A Bridge from System to Software Development for Safety-Critical Automotive Embedded Systems

Code generation for Simulink model is widely used in the development of vehicle controller. In traditional way, only the code of vehicle control model can be generated automatically by Real-Time Workshop. So programmers have to handwrite code for peripheral device drivers. The objective of this study was to develop a custom driver blocksets to support I/O devices on high performance 32-bit MPC5644A microcontroller. Furthermore, to fulfill modeling, code generation, compilation and downloading all accomplished “at the touch of a button”. This method is used and tested in the development of electric vehicle controller, which saves time and money greatly.

Automated Code Generation for Development of Electric Vehicle Controller

The invention relates to a method and a system for optimizing use of a programmable logic device for use in an electronic control unit for vehicles, said programmable logic device having a soft CPU and / or an unused residual area. The object is solved by creating a plurality of models which represent the functionality of the control unit, and creating a plurality of soft CPU configurations with different configuration periphery occupying a corresponding to the configuration of peripheral surface of the programmable logic device, and performing Processor-in the-loop simulation for the plurality of models and / or soft-CPU configurations according Instanzueren the soft CPU according to the soft-CPU configuration on a programmable logic device, and using the obtained in the PIL simulation profiling data of the soft CPU regarding the processing of the input signal to use optimizing the programmable logic device.

Method for optimising the operation of programmable logic modules in control devices for vehicles

A method and a system for optimizing utilization of a programmable logic element for use in an electronic control unit for vehicles, wherein the programmable logic element has a soft CPU and/or an unused remaining area. A plurality of model variants is generated that reproduce functionality of the control unit, and generate a plurality of soft CPU configurations with differing configuration scope, which occupy an area corresponding to the configuration scope of the programmable logic element, and execute processor-in-the-loop simulations for the plurality of model variants and/or soft CPU configurations after instantiation of the soft CPU corresponding to the soft CPU configuration on a programmable logic element. The profiling data acquired for the soft CPU during the PIL simulation is used with regard to the processing of the input signal for optimizing utilization of the programmable logic element.

Method for optimizing utilization of programmable logic elements in control units for vehicles

The motivation of our work is to make a design tool for distributed embedded systems compliant with HIS and AUTOSAR. The tool is based on Processor Expert, a component oriented development environment supporting several hundreds of microcontrollers, and Matlab simulink which is the de-facto standard in the rapid prototyping of the control applications but it does not have an adequate HW support. The objective is to provide an integrated development environment for embedded controllers having distributed nature and real-time requirements. Therefore we discuss the advantages of using an automatically generated code in the development cycle of the control embedded software. We present a developed block set and processor expert real-time target for Matlab real-time workshop embedded coder. The case study shows a development cycle for a servo control design.

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Integrated Environment for Embedded Control Systems Design

This paper discuses advantages of using automatically generated code in the development cycle of control embedded software. Since the Matlab development tool chain has become standard in the control applications development, we focus on its facilities for code generation. As the Matlab main weakness is identified a poor support for handling hardware devices of a target microcontroller. Since there exists processor expert, an excellent tool for microcontrollers' hardware resources management and design at high level, we bring radical improvement of Matlab facilities for handling controller hardware by integrating processor expert to the Matlab Simulink environment. We present developed block set and processor expert real-time target for Matlab real-time workshop embedded coder.

R. Bartosinski

Papers

Integrated Environment for Embedded Control Systems Design

Processor Expert Enhances Matlab Simulink Facilities for Embedded Software Rapid Development