Seamless design space exploration for automotive systems

The paper reports a successful design experience, revealing: the value of open-software and design frameworks to shrink up design time; the need of deserving significant effort and time to the conceptual phase of the design; the still significant importance of board-level design, especially when different volumes can produce changes in the cost-effectiveness analysis. The system we developed (BikerEye) seats on top of a free-version of a vehicular wireless platform tailored for the two wheels market. BikerEye is a multimedia system whose goal is to enhance the capability of a motorbike driver with a camera, a microphone and some recording capability. The paper compares some of the main design alternatives according to a set of metrics and highlights the role of software w.r.t. dedicated hardware in providing flexibility to the design.