Accelerated control system development

Engineers in industry today are facing a revolution in the way that embedded control systems are developed. This is being driven not just by the competition, but by higher customer expectations of safety and reliability and by government regulations, for example, in the automotive industry there are ever more stringent requirements to limit engine emissions. As a result of these pressures, engineers are now required to deliver more complex systems at lower cost and in shorter time-scales than ever before. The extensive reliance upon physical prototypes is becoming increasingly difficult as products become more complex and development time-scales shorter. It is no longer possible to perform design iterations on a series of time consuming and costly prototypes; new designs must be validated in an overall systems context so that problems are identified before they reach the physical prototype stage. Many organisations refer to their aim of getting it right first time. Clearly, computer simulation has a key role to play in implementing this new development approach. The paper discusses the role played, not just by simulation, but also associated technologies including data acquisition, control law design, automatic code generation and automatic reporting.