The eDaily is Iveco Group's new electric light commercial vehicle, launched in 2023. At its core, the vehicle control unit (VCU) represents its brain, working as the center of a sophisticated star-based control system. The VCU oversees various aspects of the vehicle such as traction control, thermal systems, recharging processes, the entire HV domain, HMI components, and more. To keep full control over the vehicle software, Iveco developed the VCU application software internally, establishing a dedicated team of software engineers and defining related processes, methods, and tools.
This presentation illustrates how Iveco Group choose an approach based on Model-Based Design leveraging MATLAB® products. By making use of libraries, data dictionaries, and referenced models, we designed a completely new software architecture to create a clear separation between the application software and the basic software, and to make the application software easily reusable over different projects. We reserved part of the software for safety monitors to achieve compliance with ISO 26262.
Safety-related software was qualified with Simulink Test™, Simulink Report Generator™, and Polyspace®. By integrating SVN into our Simulink® project, we designed a development process where multiple software engineers can work in parallel in an agile manner, achieving near-daily software releases. We created a virtual vehicle where our whole VCU application software can be integrated and tested. By using model variants, we made the virtual vehicle effortlessly convertible in the emulation engine of the hardware-in-the-loop testbench for our VCU. Finally, many of the actions needed to build and test the software have been automated via scripts to obtain an effective CI/CT pipeline.