Abstract
Keywords - Model-based, Vehicle functions, Software Life Cycle, Software Development Environment, PLM
In today´s commercial vehicle development process, the enhancement of the vehicle or the realization of the new line is obtained through an updating of single ECU and in definitive the vehicle improvements are seen as sum of these of all ECU´s. There is no OEM approach for managing the vehicle functionalities as a structured collection of interdependent functions, including code, data exchange and documentation, to be considered as independent of the ECU HW. The Eltrac approach is focused on building a central repository of Vehicle functions linking application data and pre-existing functions models from different work teams. The idea is that the functionalities can be modelled and developed independently from any hardware platform. In this way, the main part of the development becomes a specific activity, dedicated to the functionality´s description through the elaboration of the logic that abstracts away from the hardware details and features of the ECU in which it will be resident. We propose a new approach intended to support the following aspects: Reusability through the cataloguing of functionalities with dependency tracking; Interoperability and standardization of data to be exchanged among different functions; Help Team development to manage concurrent activities; Tools interoperability, allowing system engineers, software engineers to move easily between proper tools cross the development life cycle; Maintainability of central Repository in terms of configuration management of any software product.
In the automotive domain where a short development time has to be combined with the development of high quality product it is a well-know fact that much effort should be put also on the minimizing the software migration activity from the pre-existing ECUs in the new platform.