SCALEXIO AutoBox – Experiment and Test New Functions Early in Development

In-Vehicle real-time system with high computing power and comprehensive bus support

Paderborn, July 23, 2019: SCALEXIO, the dSPACE universal real-time platform for hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) and rapid control prototyping (RCP) projects, expands further with: The SCALEXIO AutoBox. The SCALEXIO AutoBox is a powerful in-vehicle prototyping system that offers tremendous processing power, precise real-time capabilities, and comprehensive support for communication bus systems. Developers can now experiment and test new functions at an early stage in real test-drives.

There is a growing demand for powerful prototyping systems that can also be used to test complex functions directly on the road. In particular, the development of functions for autonomous driving leads to increasing requirements for computing power and data bandwidth. In addition, in the area of e-mobility, fast closed-loop behavior as well as high accuracy of signal processing and generation play an important role.

The new SCALEXIO AutoBox fulfills these current and future requirements, enabling engineers to develop highly complex and sophisticated functions on the road. The system features the latest Intel processors, customer-programmable FPGA components for fast calculation of complex applications, a high-performance real-time operating system, and the intelligent I/O network IOCNET that provides low transmission latencies and a large data bandwidth.

Wide-Range Power Supply Compensates for Fluctuations

For in-vehicle use, the AutoBox is equipped with a powerful wide-range power supply. This enables a stable system power supply for on-board power architectures from 12 to 48 V. Therefore, the SCALEXIO AutoBox compensates for short-term voltage drops or peaks. The SCALEXIO AutoBox features a powerful active cooling concept to enable hosting of high computational power, and a special shock and vibration damping system for use in real test-drives. 

Investment Protection Through Modularity

The modular design of the dSPACE SCALEXIO AutoBox ensures investment protection far beyond the typical project durations of three to four years. The mobile prototyping system can be continuously adapted to changing and growing requirements and kept up to date, for example by retrofitting with the latest high-performance processors or plug-in boards with new interfaces.

“dSPACE prototyping systems combine powerful hardware, high reliability, and usability with high functionality. When we developed the SCALEXIO AutoBox, our goal was to offer users a worry-free solution so that they can concentrate fully on their development tasks,” says Christian Wördehoff, Product Manager Rapid Prototyping Systems at dSPACE.