Rapid prototyping tools for powertrain control systems development

This paper describes the application of a rapid prototyping environment for strategy development work carried out by the AIGDE group within Ford Motor Company. The system is comprised of dSPACE real time hardware, custom interfacing and Mathworks´ MatlabTM software suite. The use of rapid prototyping tools allows the abstraction of strategy development to the appropriate level for control system design. Automatic code generation binds this control system development environment to dSPACE and AIGDE custom hardware. The latter allows flexibility in the choice of sensors and actuators used for development. Manifold air-charge and fuel-flow modelling are example applications developed using the rapid prototyping environment