A lean automotive E/E-system design approach with open toolbox access

Abstract

Replacing former pure mechanical functionalities by mechatronics-based solutions, introducing new propulsion technologies, and connecting cars to their environment are only a few reasons for the still growing electrical and electronic systems (E/E-Systems) complexity at modern passenger cars. Smart methodologies and processes are necessary during the development life cycle to master the related challenges successfully. One of the key issues is to have an adequate environment for creating architectural system designs, and linking them to other development artifacts. In this paper, a novel model-based domain-specific language for embedded mechatronics-based systems, with focus on the support of different automotive sub-domains, is presented. With the described methodology, the domain-specific modeling (DSM) approach can be adapted to the needs of the respective company or project easily. Though, the modelbased language definition can be implemented using various platforms (e.g. Eclipse Modeling Framework), also a custom-made open source editor supporting the DSM technique, is presented.