ASDEN: a comprehensive design framework vision for automotive electronic control systems

The automotive electronics industry is experiencing an era of unprecedented growth. Driven by emissions and safety legislation, fuel economy constraints, cost constraints, and customer demand for convenience features and enhanced performance, electronic controls are steadily replacing their mechanical and hydraulic predecessors. As the sophistication of these systems grows, their complexity has grown dramatically as well, creating difficulties in the application of traditional engineering methods to modern systems. New design paradigms, such as model-based control, have begun to emerge. These factors have created a need for more sophisticated, integrated tool sets to help support the systems engineering process and manage the designs of the new systems. The Automotive Systems Design Environment (ASDEN) project has been undertaken by Motorola to address this need for a sophisticated, capable framework of interoperable tools. This project paves the way for a future where the "Virtual Automobile" becomes a reality: a car designed, simulated, and "driven" before the first physical prototype is even built.