Integrating automotive sensors and actuators is a key task in rapid control prototyping (RCP) performed for electronic control unit functions. But designing, implementing, and adapting projectspecific signal conditioning and power stage circuits can often be very costly and time-consuming. The new RapidPro System from dSPACE now provides flexibility in adapting sensor and actuator signals to prototyping platforms. The system is compact, robust and modular, and efficient to adapt to changing requirements and reuse in new projects. It has three different units, which can be equipped with software- and hardware-configurable modules for signal conditioning and power stages. With its numerous standard components and flexibility, it can greatly reduce, or in some cases even eliminate, the additional work otherwise involved in preparing circuits for new projects. The RapidPro units - the RapidPro SC Unit (signal conditioning), RapidPro Power Unit (power stages) and RapidPro Control Unit (for intelligent I/O subsystems) - can be combined as required to make a single physical unit called a stack. There is a large selection of plug-on modules for signal conditioning (for example, for crankshaft and camshaft sensor signals) and power stages (for example, 2-channel, full-bridge driver module). The RapidPro System can be used together with the prototyping platforms MicroAutoBox/AutoBox to develop control applications for fields such as engine, transmission, vehicle dynamics, body electronics and drives - in the vehicle, in the laboratory, or on the test bench. PC software called ConfigurationDesk was especially developed for fast, intuitive configuration of all RapidPro's hardware parameters, and for easy commissioning and diagnostics.
Intecrio V1.0 is the new Etas software product that enables rapid prototyping of automotive electronic systems based on Matlab/Simulink and Ascet models. Vehicle manufacturers have to meet growing customer demands and comply with more stringent regulations for lower fuel consumption, fewer polluting agents, greater driving safety, and better driving comfort. To meet these requirements, vehicle manufacturers rely increasingly on electronic systems in the vehicle. These systems must be readily available, robust, very safe in terms of functionality, and compatible with the long product life cycles of vehicles. As a rule, one vehicle manufacturer and many suppliers are involved in the development of a vehicle. A clear distribution of responsibilities and defined interfaces are therefore essential for smooth cooperation. For all involved, a consistent quality and risk management is indispensable during the development process of electronic systems. Briefly, software development for electronic components in vehicles, including ECUs, is always working under a unique combination of constraints. The tool which fulfils these automotive requirements is Intecrio V1.0. Three major topics are addressed: as an Integration Platform, the tool enables the integration of various software functions from different Behavior Modeling Tools (BMT), thereby guaranteeing a target-identical behavior and investment safety. As an Experiment Environment, it allows the verification and validation of application software and assures comfortable measurement and calibration of values and configurations of the combined code via an interactive GUI. With Fullpass and Bypass Applications, it is the first tool that validates a control algorithm by parallel computation of different variants of this control algorithm and that allows to switch between possible solutions at the runtime of an experiment.
I-Logix announced the release of Rhapsody 6.0, an UML 2.0 Model-Driven Development (MDD) product. Version 6.0 utilises a new graphical engine to improve user workflow, extending its design capacity with advanced formatting, ergonomics, and drawing capabilities. A complete upgrade to the diagram editors provides a workflow environment that goes beyond the Unified Modelling Language (UML) to allow the capture of any type of diagram relevant to the developer's domain. Further simplifying the developers' task are additional graphical features such as bitmaps, rich text, and hyperlinking, as well as enhanced formatting, presentation and printing functions. It also features The Rhapsody Gateway, a requirements management component designed to provide seamless bi-directional interfacing with third-party requirements management tools including Requisite Pro, DOORS, Word, and Excel. Targeting C-developers, it is allowing them to work in either a Structured and/or Object-Oriented environment. Using Rhapsody, the structured-C programmer gains productivity enhancements by working with graphical files, functions and data in an environment that allows execution and debugging to be performed at the design level. In addition, legacy and external C code can be imported in its original form for greater reuse of Intellectual Property (IP), and if desired, migrated to UML. Focusing on Mission Critical Certification, the tool provides the user with greater control via a scalable and certifiable framework for C++. The framework is model-based, originating directly from the Rhapsody model and providing component structure and functionality. The user benefits from a framework that is customisable and certifiable for mission-critical standards such as DO-178B, as well as fully scalable for applications with smaller footprints. Enhancing the Design for Testability (DFT) capability, users can now automatically generate test vectors that offer the highest Modified Condition/Decision Coverage ( (MC/DC) code coverage possible for a particular design. With Rhapsody Automatic Test Generator (ATG), another add-on product available with Version 6.0, I-Logix extends Model-Driven Development to include Model Driven Testing, eliminating the need of manually developing test cases and streamlining the verification and validation cycle.
Tilcon Software presented its version 5.3 of the Interface Development Suite (IDS) at Embedded World 2005. The IDS is a GUI and HMI builder consisting of three powerful components: the Embedded Engine, a platform-independent API and a visual Interface Builder. IDS features a user-friendly design tool with a drag & drop, WYSIWYG editor. Screens can be fully customised and much of the user interface logic specified with property sheets. Simulation capabilities are available at the click of a button and developers simply tie graphical objects to their data source using the API. Tilcon IDS v. 5.3 incorporates significant advancements. It now includes support for the following widgets under VxWorks: Editable text (single line), Directory Box and Scroll Area. Additionally, windows now have frames in VxWorks. TRT_MeasureText is a new API function that will return the size of a text string before displaying the string. A Menu Manager utility is now available in Interface Builder that gives the user control over the look and feel of menus. It is available under the «options" menu in the Interface Builder and can control attributes like the colour, style and size of font (and more). Now, Interface Builder features a utililty that gives the user control over the look and feel of scrollbars. IDS 5.3 now uses a new font manager which makes it possible to register new fonts, available in the Interface Builder under the «options" menu. Simultaneously, Tilcon's needle objects have been enhanced. The needles now support anti-aliasing, shading and translucency. There are many more pre-defined needle types available for use when creating a needle. The Tilcon channel is a mechanism through which communication takes place between two processes (or threads), such as between an application and an embedded engine. The new QNX Platform Core Source Kit simplifies software debugging and troubleshooting by providing visibility into the source code for virtually all system libraries and OS S facilities. As a result, developers can more easily analyse system behaviour for easier code integration, quickly pinpoint the causes of unexpected software behaviour for faster troubleshooting, and, when required, fine-tune OS components to address the specific demands of their application. The QNX Platform Core Source Kit includes source code for the following components: libraries - system, runtime, networking, encryption, XML, compression, image handling (e.g. JPEG), etc.; driver frameworks - audio, graphics, input, serial, network, etc.; POSIX and QNX utilities - cp, grep, ls, mkdir, sed, touch, etc.; networking services - TCP/IP, PPP, QNX io-net, remote file systems, etc.; embedded networking services - tiny stack, embedded web server, data server, etc.; and instrumentation utilities - trace logging, trace capture, etc. The Platform Core Source kit is licensed per project.Solid Information Technology launched a release 4.2 of its Autonomic Data Management Platform at Embedded World. In this version there is a "1-Safe" hot standby option to the existing 2-Safe configurations added. This option provides higher application throughput for systems with lower data reliability requirements, offering an improvement in speed of over ten times compared with the highest reliability option. In addition to the already flexible safeness and durability, this allows for more flexibility in tuning applications for data reliability and application throughput. The new release strengthens the self-managing aspects of the platform by making it easier to detect and modify server behaviour at run time, allowing operations like a switch between running in hot standby and standalone modes, or switching to a secondary machine for hot standby operations. In addition, new features in V4.2 make it easier to dynamically upgrade a Solid data manager that is used in a high availability application without disrupting continuous operations. The synchronous data replication facility, Solid SmartFlow, is also enhanced, to allow the traffic between masters and replicas to be compressed. Client/sever traffic may also be compressed in version 4.2, further reducing the consumption of bandwidth, decreasing transaction times, and enhancing application throughput. It was also announced that the speed of look-ups to in-memory-tables is doubled, many minor performance improvements are included and support for Linux on PowerPC hardware is now available.
