Technical Articles

On-Target Rapid Prototyping: A Practical Approach for Bootstrapping Production ECU Software Development

By Tom Erkkinen and Shobhit Shanker, MathWorks, and Seshadri Shekar and Mohamed Ziaudeen, Automotive Infotronics Private Limited


Rapid control prototyping (RCP) is a widely used technique for verifying a controller’s functional behavior. Typically, RCP uses a target processor with ample processing power and memory, which makes the technique attractive for engineers exploring new concepts. However, a large gap often exists between the RCP target and the production ECU in terms of the available code generation technology, the supporting tool chain, and I/O hardware. Consequently, significant work is required when migrating a controller from RCP to production. Furthermore, due to cost constraints, RCP systems are difficult to deploy in large numbers for fleet testing or preproduction trials.

In response to the challenges associated with RCP, automotive engineers are moving towards on-target rapid prototyping (OTRP). With OTRP, the code is generated, cross-compiled, and downloaded either to the ECU used in production or to a development version of the ECU with additional memory and instrumentation support. OTRP enables engineers to use the same code generator, supporting tool chain, and ECU hardware during development, simplifying the migration to production. This paper provides an introduction to Model-Based Design and OTRP, and presents a step-by-step approach for getting started with OTRP using a new algorithm export technique.

Copyright © 2011 by The MathWorks, Inc. Published by SAE International, with permission.

This paper was presented at SAE World Congress.

Read full paper.

Published 2011

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