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The underlying theories of both control engineering and real-time systems engineering assume idealized system abstractions that mutually neglect central aspects of the other discipline. Control engineering theory, on the one hand, usually assumes jitter free sampling and constant input-output latencies disregarding complex real-world timing effects. Real-time engineering theory, on the other hand, uses abstract performance models that neglect the functional behavior, and derives worst-case situations that have little expressiveness for control functionalities in physically dominated automotive systems. As a consequence, there is a lot of potential for a systematic co-engineering between both disciplines, increasing design efficiency and confidence. We have taken a standard control-engineering tool, Simulink, and combined it with state-of-the-art real-time system design and analysis tools, SymTA/S and TraceAnalyzer from Symtavision.

Vibration testing is often carried out for automotive components to meet guidelines based on their operational environments. This is an iterative process wherein design changes may need to be made depending on an intermediate model’s dynamic behavior. Predicting the behavior based on modifications in boundary conditions of a well-defined numerical model imparts practical insights to the component’s responses. To this end, application of a general method using experimental free-free condition frequency response functions of a structure is discussed in the presented work. The procedure is shown to be useful for prediction of responses when kinematic boundary conditions are applied, without the need for an actual measurement. This approach is outlined in the paper and is applied to datasets where dynamic modifications are made at multiple boundary nodes.

India contributed to 11% of the global road accidents and was ranked 1st among road deaths according to the latest World Health Organization (WHO) report 2018. Indian National Highways (NH) is a meagre 5% of the country’s road network but accounts for 55% of the road accidents and 61% of the road deaths. Majority of the freight traffic is ferried by Commercial Vehicles (CV) or trucks along these highways and this in turn increases the probability of them being involved in a road accident. The country’s economy is forecasted to thrive in the coming years and hence the requirement of CVs is aligned to international categorisation in the supply chain and shall play a pivotal role. In the year 2019, 13,532 road deaths were associated with CV occupants. The trucking industry is an unorganized sector wherein the illegal overloading of vehicles and over-the-limit driving hours pose a serious threat to road users.

Environmental consciousness and tightening emissions legislation push the market share of electronic fuel injection within a dynamically growing world wide small engines market. Similar to automotive engines during late 1980's, this opens up opportunities for original equipment manufacturers (OEM) and suppliers to jointly advance small engines performance in terms of fuel economy, emissions, and drivability. In this context, advanced combustion system analyses from automotive engine testing have been applied to a typical production motorcycle small engine. The 125cc 4-stroke, 2-valve, air-cooled, single-cylinder engine with closed-loop lambda-controlled electronic port fuel injection was investigated in original series configuration on an engine dynamometer. The test cycle fuel consumption simulation provides reasonable best case fuel economy estimates based on stationary map fuel consumption measurements.

Engine Start/Stop systems reduce CO₂ emissions by turning off the combustion engine at vehicle standstill. This avoids the injection of fuel that would otherwise be needed simply to overcome internal combustion engine losses. As a next development step, engine losses at higher vehicle speeds are to be addressed. During deceleration, state-of-the-art engine technology turns off fuel injection as soon as the driver releases the gas pedal, thus the combustion engine is motored by the vehicle. The engine's drag torque could be desired by the driver, e.g., as a brake assist during downhill driving. However, quite frequently the driver wishes to coast at almost constant speed. Similar to Start/Stop operation, in such situations fuel is injected to simply overcome the combustion engine's drag torque. An operation mode referred to as "Free-Wheeling" reduces CO₂ emissions under such coasting conditions by disconnecting the combustion engine from the powertrain and by turning it off.

Today's ABS sytems for commercial vehicles and trailers reflect specific solutions for individual vehicle model wiring and control features. In addition, the chassis mounting requirements for trailer applications uses a separate sealed housing for the relay and other sensitive components. A logical progression of design development resulted in the new ABS 6S/4K open system with the ability of being adaptable to specific vehicle control requirements. A variety of different component arrangements can be accommodated. Accordingly, it does not require a standard wiring harness. Wiring is left optional for the specific vehicle configuration. The housing may be frame mounted without any special protection and therefore can cover both trailer and tractor applications. The housing is designed to provide necessary protection from water and dirt. The electronic senses the peripheral component configuration via a simple “learning” procedure.

The paper begins with an overview of the history of ABS for commercial vehicles followed by a brief description of the technology of the BOSCH ABS at the time it went into mass production in 1981. Subsequently it describes the field experiences with ABS including the experiences of drivers and operators. These experiences are reflected in the equipment which BOSCH offers today. Additional functions such as ASR (traction control) have been integrated. The paper provides an overview of the functions available today and their implementation. The paper concludes with a discussion on potential continued developments and an attempt to describe the systems which will be required by the mid 9os.

Software-in-the-Loop (SiL) test environments are the ideal virtual platforms for enabling continuous-development, -integration, -testing -delivery or -deployment commonly referred as Continuous-X (CX) of the complex functionalities in the current automotive industry. This trend especially is contributed by several factors such as the industry wide standardization of the model exchange formats, interfaces as well as architecture definitions. The approach of frontloading software testing with SiL test environments is predominantly advocated as well as already adopted by various Automotive OEMs, thereby the demand for innovating applicable methods is increasing. However, prominent usage of the existing monolithic architecture for interaction of various elements in the SiL environment, without regarding the separation between functional and non-functional test scope, is reducing the usability and thus limiting significantly the cost saving potential of CX with SiL.

This paper presents an overview of the evolution & revolution of automotive E/E architectures and how we at Bosch, envision the technology in the future. It provides information on the bottlenecks for current E/E architectures and drivers for their evolution. Functionalities such as automated driving, connectivity and cyber-security have gained increasing importance over the past few years. The importance of these functionalities will continue to grow as these cutting-edge technologies mature and market acceptance increases. Implementation of these functionalities in mainstream vehicles will demand a paradigm shift in E/E architectures with respect to in-vehicle communication networks, power networks, connectivity, safety and security. This paper expounds on these points at a system level.

This paper presents the Vehicle Dynamics Control (VDC) for commercial vehicles developed by BOSCH. The underlying physical concept is discussed in the second section after a short introduction. The third section shows the computer simulation used in the development process. Section four describes the controller structure of the VDC system. In Section five the use and effectiveness of VDC for commercial vehicles is shown in different critical driving situations. This is done by using measured data collected during testing (lane change, circular track) and it demonstrates that the safety improvements achieved for passenger cars are also possible for commercial vehicles.

The conventional measurements to describe the photometric quality of headlamps usually only comprise the luminous flux and the illuminance (resp. the luminous intensity) in several measuring points given by Type Approval Legislation. Practically, these photometric measurements do not describe the visual impression of a headlamp light distribution sufficiently, neither in lab nor in real street geometry. With the clear outer lens headlamps introduced recently, filament images are projected directly onto the screens or streets, thus giving new impulses to research. Starting from the established photometric practice, other types of measurements and physiological fundamentals will be discussed. The basic tools to make physical measurement and physiological impression comparable, e.g. in terms of homogeneity, are shown.

This paper describes the concept of the Diagnostic System Management DSM which introduces an improved object-oriented software architecture in order to meet the high performance and reliability requirements of automotive On-Board Diagnostic Systems (OBD). DSM handles standard tasks and offers services to integrate diagnostic and control functions. This architecture enables the flexible composition of system-independent, reusable function implementations. Hence a distributed software development and software sharing are supported. The module DSM consists of a Fault Code Memory, an Inhibit Handler, a Validator and a Function Scheduler. Special care has been taken to achieve robustness against EMI effects. Bosch will use DSM in the future powertrain control systems.

The first generation of radar-sensor-based ACC-Systems will be available in 1998/1999 in Europe. As a first step high end car manufacturers will sell ACC as optional equipment in their top models for a significant add-on price. For this generation good performance was the most important development goal. For the future, however, small, highly integrated systems are needed which easily can be fitted into the body of small cars. High performance and low cost are essential to allow the car manufacturers to sell ACC as standard equipment. A first step in that direction is the “Sensor and Control Unit” developed by Bosch which integrates a FMCW-radar sensor and the ACC-controller in one housing. It is designed for easy manufacturing on existing equipment with standard processes. The design meets the requirements of an early phase with low production figures as well as a phase characterized by increasing numbers and decreasing prices.

ABS has proven to be a contribution to active safety. The introduction of traction control (TC) in 1986 and even more significantly, the introduction of vehicle dynamics control (VDC) in 1995 have been further milestones in this field. The functionality of these systems (ABS, TC, VDC) is mainly determined by the electronic control unit (ECU). A system supplier who is to provide an ECU-platform concept including a large functionality, while meeting customer specific requirements at an optimized price, needs standardization strategies. This paper describes a standardization concept for an ABS ECU, beginning with the basic ABS HW and SW design and the extension to TC and VDC. It also shows the degree of flexibility, the benefits for the vehicle manufacturer and the possible cost optimization for the system supplier.

The reduction of nitrous oxides in the exhaust gases of internal combustion engines using a urea water solution is gaining more and more importance. While maintaining the future exhaust gas emission regulations, like the Euro 6 for passenger cars and the Euro 5 for commercial vehicles, urea dosing allows the engine management to be modified to improve fuel economy as well. The system manufacturer Robert Bosch has started early to develop the necessary dosing systems for the urea water solution. More than 300.000 Units have been delivered in 2007 for heavy duty applications. Typical dosing quantities for those systems are in the range of 0.01 l/h for passenger car systems and up to 10 l/h for commercial vehicles. During the first years of development and application of urea dosing systems, instantaneous flow measuring devices were used, which were not operating fully satisfactory.

For about 20 years now, legislation for emission standards has become more and more strict. Main current standards are LEVII legislation for US- and EU4 for the European Market. Many emerging markets like e.g. China, India, Russia adopt EU regulations (directly or modified. Mid of 90's discussions began on restrictions and legislation for CO2 emissions. The European commission recently proposed concrete legislation standards for 2012 and 2020. These will have strong influence on the strategies of the Car Manufacturers. Single measures like start stop will be of general interest. But for reaching the fleet average combinations of measures in a single engine configuration will be necessary. Bosch system solutions for engine- and power-train management are available for the whole span of world car segments, ranging from value concepts optimized for emerging markets up to high feature solutions for most stringent requirements world wide.

In order to prevent injuries due to automatic functions like express- and comfort-opening/closing of power operated window-lift and sunroof systems, mechanisms for detecting obstacles have to be established. The main related regulations are the 74/60/ECC and the FMVSS 118. In this paper we present a unified approach for smart actuators that bases on monitoring the rotational speed of the armature. The advantages have been worked out with the aid of system simulation and proven with tests under realistic and extreme scenarios. The presented results are mainly focused on a sunroof project, which is upcoming for an European car platform in 2001 and is specified to fulfill both regulations simultaneously.

The development of future automotive electronic systems requires new concepts in the software architecture, development methodology and information exchange. At Bosch an XML and MSR based technology is applied to achieve a consistent information handling throughout the entire software development process. This approach enables the tool independent exchange of information and documentation between the involved development partners. This paper presents the software architecture, the specification of software components in XML, the process steps, an example and an exchange scenario with an external development partner.

Future emission standards for heavy-duty vehicles like Euro 4, Euro 5, US '07 require advanced engine functionality. One contribution to achieve this target is the catalytic reduction of nitrogen oxides by injection of urea water solution to the exhaust gas. An overview on a urea dosing system, also called DENOXTRONIC, is given and a dosing strategy is described.

Vehicle inspection in repair shops is often still based on paper forms. Information Technology (IT) does not yet support the entire inspection process. In this paper, we introduce a small wearable IT device that is controlled by speech and enables service technicians to wirelessly access relevant data and to perform on-site communication. Users can carry this device in a pocket and use a small headset to enter speech and receive audio feedback. This system provides a completely speech-enabled functionality and thus offers a hands-free operation. After showing the applicability of wearable computers in this environment, we developed a proprietary hardware system consisting of a thin-client connected via a Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications (DECT) link to a standard Personal Computer (PC) that runs a speech engine and hosts a database. Several field tests in garages helped us during the evolution of our prototypes where service technicians critiqued the prototypes.