Holistic object-oriented modelling of distributed automotive real-time control applications

The automotive industry has been late in introducing object oriented (OO) analysis, design, and programming, compared to many other businesses. This is partly due to the fact that OO programming has been considered too expensive in terms of computational resources, but also because there are elements in the application functions for which OO methods do not give sufficient support. Nevertheless, OO techniques provide many advantages, and we discuss how they can be used for automotive real time control applications. The suggested approach is holistic in the following respects: it treats functionality on the vehicle level rather than on individual control units; it includes both the embedded system and its environment; and it considers both hardware and software.