A pair of challenges facing the innovators are the speed of embedded software development and ensuring software quality at the speed of its development.

Interview with Wensi Jin, Automotive Industry Manager, MathWorks

What key electronics trends are driving automotive innovations?
1. Legislative requirements (fuel economy, emission, and safety in particular), customer demand, and cost will be the key forces propelling the innovation in automotive electronics.
2. I would like to point out two key differences between automotive electronics and consumer electronics from an engineering point of view.
  1. First, automotive electronics exist to enable a higher level of functionality, rather than as being a standalone device. For example, hybrid/electric powertrain will not function without power electronics and electronic control systems. For this reason, electronics need to be designed, integrated, and optimized as part of the subsystems or as part of the vehicle as a whole. The ability to carry out this level of design, integration, and optimization is one of the key challenges facing the innovators in automotive electronics.
  2. Second, automotive electronics are “powered” by software. The industry has added embedded software to virtually every electronic system, from tire pressure monitoring to HVAC (heating ventilation, and air conditioning), to engine controls. A relatively basic vehicle today may have ten or more electronic controllers running a million or more lines of software code. Here, a pair of challenges facing the innovators are the speed of embedded software development and ensuring software quality at the speed of its development.

Various technologies were rolled out at CES 2015, what is your envision on these trends and features?
1. Many of the new technologies are in response to the key forces that I previously mentioned.
2. Electrified powertrain will gain acceptance around the world, but the pace of adoption will depend on the affordability of the underlying technologies and local market conditions.
  1. Now, to get the most fuel economic benefit out of the investment towards electrified powertrain development, companies must build internal competencies in system level optimization, again, as I alluded to earlier.
  2. They need to invest in people, simulation model development, and evolution of simulation models. People and model development are very important here. Automotive companies already use simulation for many vehicle engineering tasks. However, most if not all the simulation models today are detailed analytical models meant to solve a specific component design challenge or one aspect of vehicle design such as structural integrity. Design and optimization of electrified powertrain needs system level simulation models that include every major subsystem including electronic control system. And, these models need to run very fast, often faster than real time, so they can be leveraged for systematic optimization.

They also need to connect the models together with optimization technologies and they need to leverage the modern computing technologies such as parallel computing and GPU. This is because system level optimization that includes mechanical and electronics hardware as well as embedded software is never done with one time with a single vehicle model. Optimization, like engineering in general, is an iterative process. Engineers need to make tens of thousands of runs for a given vehicle model so a full range of operating conditions are covered. And they need to repeat these thousands of runs when a mechanical design change, or an electronics design change, or a software design change happens.

We will see a gradual ramp up of active safety from driving assistance towards autonomous driving. See attached write up for our (MathWorks) thoughts and how we see modelling and simulation will help.
Last but not least, we will see a rapid evolution of human machine interfaces (HMI) including instrument panel, heads-up display, and infotainment, and other elements. Here, while the key attraction is often the graphical presentation of the interface and interaction between the driver and the touch screens, we believe the design and quality of the software behind the displays will differentiate a successful HMI product and its competitors.

What are your views on Indian automotive electronics market and its growth?
1. There is no doubt that Indian automotive electronics market will grow, and we expect the growth to be significant and sustained. Today, vehicles sold in India have less electronic and software content compared to those in many other markets. But driving factors such as those that I mentioned above exist in India just as they do elsewhere. While in some cases electronics are added onto existing systems, OEMs need to designed them in so that they are integrated and optimized with the mechanical hardware as I mentioned above. It is only through such integration that OEMs – with their suppliers – can achieve cost target and quality goals in the face of rising design complexity.

How do you look at the opportunities for MathWorks?
1. MathWorks is a provider of engineering tools. Our history in the automotive industry has been and will be to enable engineers to tackle greater design complexity.
2. In some cases, this enablement is through automation, with automatic generation of production embedded software being one example.
3. In some cases, this enablement is by making it possible for engineers who have a system view to carry out design work themselves rather than relying on and waiting for others who are less well positioned to do so. For example, with Model-Based Design, system engineers can develop their own system level simulation models, carry out trade off studies, and come up with optimal design parameters. As a result, they will be able to guide their suppliers, internal or external to the company, to come up with the part that meets the optimized specification.
4. And, the use of models has proven to improve the communication and thus process efficiency between OEM and suppliers. Engineering teams are adopting model as the executable specification rather than reading and interpret paper documents and dealing with the confusion that often results.
5. I invite you to review the many examples of how automotive companies reduced development cost and product cost and/or achieved faster development speed with Model-Based Design here: http://www.mathworks.com/company/user_stories/industry.html.