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Electronic controllers for powertrain systems are required to meet the demands for increased system performance and functionality at reasonable cost. It is indispensable to examine the solutions from a range of view points synthetically for cost optimization. This paper describes a cost-effective hardware and software architecture of the electronic controllers for powertrain systems. A new method for noise reduction of a switching regulator, and a low standby current wakeup solution are also discussed as further functions needed for high performance powertrain systems.

This paper describes a development method for object-oriented automotive control software embedded with automatically generated programs from controller models. We have designed control software with object-oriented application frameworks. An application framework consists of objects. Each object is composed of the attribute of a control system and a function to calculate the status. The function is a C function, which is automatically generated from the block diagram of a controller model designed with a computer aided engineering tool. An object is implemented with a wrapper and the generated C function. The wrapper defines the interface and attribute of the object. The wrapper is automatically generated referring to the generated C function. We have applied this method to develop some parts of automotive engine control software and have found that 95% of the source code could be generated automatically from controller models.

This paper presents a distributed control system framework for next-generation automotive control systems, in which various control units are connected with CAN bus. The framework is a software platform that performs communication between control units and invocation of application programs. The framework includes necessary functions for data transmission to meet end-to-end timing constraints in distributed control systems. Application programmers don't have to write any communication procedure but focus on developing application programs with appropriate API (Application Program Interface). The framework is based on driving force management and also OSEK, which is a standard real-time operating system (OSEK-OS) and a communication protocol (CAN) for automotive control. We are now applying our prototype framework to an adaptive cruise control system in our experimental vehicle.