Areas of Application

Prototyping has become an integral part of vehicle development. Early prototyping is a key to success, particularly in the development of electronic components. In this process, ETAS INTECRIO, the integration and configuration platform, supports the following methods:

INTECRIO-VP - Virtual Prototyping

With INTECRIO-VP, function developers can use Model-in-the-Loop (MiL) technologies in the early stage of development to validate and pre-calibrate new functions regardless of the limitations of real time or the constraints of the physical vehicle environment. At the PC workstation (i.e. without the use of specialized hardware), stimuli can be used that are created by the signal generator of the ETAS Experiment Environment provided by INTECRIO. Alternatively, plant models depicting the driver, vehicle, and environment are used instead. This can result in synergies between the function development and system development activities. Compared with a physical target ECU, virtual prototyping offers almost unlimited computing power and storage space.

INTECRIO-RP - Rapid Prototyping

With INTECRIO-RP, developers can seamlessly access the validated function model from the virtual prototyping step in rapid prototyping experiments. The inputs and outputs of the function are now connected to physical sensors and actuators via appropriate interfaces. Using ETAS rapid prototyping hardware, prototypes can be quickly and easily integrated into existing ECU vehicle networks via a multitude of ECU and bus interfaces, such as CAN, CAN FD, ETK, FETK, XETK, LIN, and FlexRay. In the bypass experiment, which is the most commonly used rapid prototyping method, new ECU functions are computed on a simulation controller. The results of these computations are transferred to an ECU that has a real-time connection (e.g. via an ETK interface) to the simulation controller. The ECU can use these results instead of or in addition to the internally calculated data.