The MathWorks said that Volkswagen has integrated a fully AUTOSAR-compliant comfort and convenience electronic control unit (ECU) into an existing Volkswagen ECU network by automatically generating the compliant software from Simulink models with The MathWorks Real-Time Workshop Embedded Coder. As part of the project, Volkswagen integrated the AUTOSAR-compliant ECU onto a serial device that was successfully deployed into a Volkswagen Passat sedan.
According to Andy Grace, The MathWorks vice president of engineering and design automation, applying model-based design with MathWorks products enabled Volkswagen engineers to accelerate the process of specifying, deploying, and verifying production-quality software. Real-Time Workshop Embedded Coder automatically produced AUTOSAR-compliant C code from the models, which eliminated the cost and complexity of manual code generation. Volkswagen also used The MathWorks AUTOSAR demonstration kit (ADK), which supports model-based design of AUTOSAR software components with MATLAB, Simulink, and Real-Time Workshop Embedded Coder.
“We are excited to demonstrate the integration of an AUTOSAR-compliant ECU into an existing ECU network through our collaboration with The MathWorks and other AUTOSAR partners,” said Bernd Kunkel, the project manager at Volkswagen responsible for the initiative. “We worked closely with The MathWorks to integrate Model-Based Design, which accelerated the generation of code, eliminated many of the errors associated with hand-coding, and helped us contribute to developing open standards.”