March 15, 2024: New standard for virtual control units facilitates collaboration between OEMs and suppliers during validation

November 17, 2023: Learn more about the seamless transition from interactive development to continuous integration (CI)/ continuous testing (CT) with TargetLink, using the optional TargetLink Automation Package and the Windows® Subsystem for Linux (WSL).

September 21, 2023: Many of you probably know that C++ is the programming language of the Adaptive AUTOSAR standard. In C++, namespaces can be used to structure code elements that belong together, thereby modularizing the code. In this blog post, we'll show you how namespaces can be currently used in TargetLink.

July 17, 2023: Future vehicles become more and more software-defined – so be aware of the importance of cybersecurity. We briefly review the current state of automotive cybersecurity, including requirements imposed by regulations. Additionally, we present how dSPACE is supporting you to tackle new challenges arising with mandatory cybersecurity testing.
 

June 1, 2023 As the world increasingly embraces sustainable transportation solutions, electromobility has emerged as a key driver of the automotive industry's transformation. Electric vehicles are rapidly becoming the future of transportation, and with their growing popularity, the need for efficient testing solutions has never been more critical. Therefore, turnkey solutions stand out as game changers. In this blog article, we will explore the importance of turnkey solutions in electromobility automotive testing and how they contribute to the development and success of electric vehicles.

May 10, 2023: Software-in-the-loop (SIL) testing has become an integral part of software development in the automotive industry. At the same time, the short abbreviation SIL covers a very wide range of topics. This blog article describes what SIL simulation means and which requirements and challenges it entails.

April 11, 2023: In this blog post, we will introduce you to one of these features that helps you move faster from AUTOSAR architecture to modeling behavior of AUTOSAR software components in TargetLink: the AUTOSAR frame model generation.

February 9, 2023: When you are creating complex simulation models for power electronic circuits, the models might become too large to be computed on a single FGPA without optimizations.
A concrete example will be used to illustrate a generic approach dSPACE provides for this task.

December 16, 2022: For most automotive companies and suppliers, the MISRA C standard is an important part of quality assurance, and checking the program source code for deviations from the standard is used to identify potential errors and to improve software quality. But what is the objective of the MISRA C standard and how can the standard be used in model-based development with TargetLink?

December 13, 2022: The automobile industry is facing numerous challenges in developing, verifying, and validating the increasingly digital and connected components that will define the vehicle of the future. In addition to pure services, customers expect continuous further development during operation which, in addition to safety-related updates through new features, maintains the value of the vehicle throughout the entire product life cycle.

December 8, 2022: In recent years, data-driven development has become one of the most important methods of software development in various industries. The automotive industry is leading the race, focusing on solving the self-driving car problem, where high-quality data plays a key role. To further develop its tools and provide cutting-edge features for the automotive industry, dSPACE has built an ecosystem for collecting high-quality data. To do this, the company uses its own sensor vehicle, which was developed specifically for this purpose.

26. August, 2022: Since late 2021, dSPACE SystemDesk has enabled the export of virtual control units (V-ECUs) in FMU format, thus making communication of V-ECUs between several parties significantly easier. In addition to the established method of simulating V-ECUs with dSPACE VEOS, simulators from third-party providers can now also be used.

August 8, 2022: Mobility is currently undergoing tremendous change. The consumption of fossil fuels is being considerably reduced and successively replaced by alternative propulsion technology, such as electric drives. Conventional combustion engines that run on gasoline or diesel still exist, but vehicles propelled by batteries, fuel cells, or hybrid drives are becoming an ever more familiar sight on our roads. Each of the above propulsion types places its own demands on development and testing. Learn how dSPACE supports you with its solutions in this blog.

July 20, 2022: In the last decade, software became a key business differentiator, and our customers need to develop more software with higher quality in shorter development cycles. We are not surprised that the demand for combining model-based development (MBD) and processes of continuous integration and testing is increasing. In this blog post, we show you our solution to use pull requests with MBD files to take your software development to the next level.

July 11, 2022: Safe software for the safe development of self-driving cars:  SIMPHERA was successfully certified according to DIN ISO 26262. According to the joint ideas of dSPACE and TÜV Süd, increments will be certified in a continuous certification process in the future. We want dSPACE customers to be able to concentrate on their core competencies and use dSPACE tools with the certainty that the functions developed with them meet the highest industry standards in terms of functional safety.  

April 12, 2022: The integration of ADAS/AD functions in vehicles serves one goal: To ensure and, where possible, increase the safety of all road users. But what needs to be considered in the validation of intelligent systems? Is the consideration of regulations, test scenarios, sensors, and functions sufficient, or does the dynamic behavior of the vehicle also play a decisive role?

March 11, 2022: Many dSPACE customers are already using Git or are planning to switch soon, to benefit from the advantages of modern, distributed version-control systems, e.g., faster development speeds, greater flexibility, or increased collaboration. Out-of-the box Git allows the user to manage text files but not binary files like TargetLink or Simulink^® model files. Model Compare can be integrated in Git to enable you to compare and merge model files.

February 24, 2022:
Vehicle-in-the-loop simulation provides a sophisticated way to test the sensor input for ADAS/AD functions. The comprehensive dSPACE product portfolio of simulation hardware and software offers you an easy way to set up and configure your test scenario.

January 25, 2022: The element-based merging approach of dSPACE AUTOSAR Compare provides our customers with an easy and intuitive way to copy selected AUTOSAR elements, sub-elements, and properties. With rule-based merging, this feature is catapulted to the next level, allowing the complete merge process to be automated in a rule-based way that can be entirely controlled from the Command Prompt window.

January 12, 2022: 

Software development in the automotive industry increasingly relies on agile methods and continuous integration. Due to the special requirements of the code to be tested, imposed by factors such as real-time capability, demands on the quality and thus on testing are high. This often requires new methods and processes to achieve functional test systems.

December 16, 2021: If you are getting started in data logging for the development of highly automated and autonomous vehicles, I can give you a list of eight essential tips for efficient data logging and for selecting the corresponding tools. Data logging is the starting point of the data pipeline in the data-driven development process for ADAS/AD.

December 14, 2021: Whether functions are being developed for autonomous driving, for driver assistance systems, or for the control of electric motors or combustion engines, simulations cannot yet replace all aspects of test drives. The extensive functional safety features of our MicroAutoBox III provide a high degree of safety during in-vehicle function prototyping.

September 14, 2021: Whenever people entrust technology with their safety, as is the case with autonomous driving, trust is pivotal. The scalability of dSPACE SIMPHERA, an entirely new type of simulation and validation software, lets users run tests on innumerable scenarios in parallel, making it possible to build trust in autonomous vehicles.

August 17, 2021: As software development is becoming faster, more complex, and distributed all over the world, most of our customers use a version control system like Git to accelerate development and ensure integrity. If you use a version control system, tracking and merging changes is vital for the success of your project. Git provides built-in commands that show changes between commits, branches, or files and merges them.

June 18, 2021: Data logging is one of the key stages in data-driven development in the ADAS/AD domain. Data must first be collected for training, and then data must be collected for validation and testing. RTMaps is a complete development and execution tool that is ideal for data logging.

April 27, 2021: Continuous integration has enabled many customers to develop, test, and build software faster and more efficiently. This blog post shows you the first steps to using the production code generator TargetLink’s strengths in a continuous integration workflow as part of your model-based development environment.

April 6, 2021: The introduction of continuous integration processes for model development and integration in HIL applications is already a key to making HIL testing even more productive. dSPACE’s tools experience can help to manage the transition from classic processes to a highly flexible and automated model production and delivery process.

February 15, 2021: Data logging in the automotive industry has been transitioning to a new form due to challenges arising from new E/E architectures, including ADAS/AD functions. In this blog post, we will give you some tips and recommendations on how you can optimize data logging and make it more efficient by using the right tools and methods.

December 14, 2020: Arguing for safe autonomous vehicles is an ongoing challenge, requiring a cooperative effort between the automotive industry and legislations. Data Replay is a centerpiece in the AD safety argumentation because it ensures high confidence levels in autonomous vehicles. However, Data Replay testing brings about challenges at the HIL station level and in the scalability of HIL clusters as well as efficient cloud-backbone connectivity.

November 20, 2020: Adaptive AUTOSAR, the new standard of the AUTOSAR Consortium, is intended to cover a wide range of applications, including autonomous driving and networked cars. It's architecture, however, changes some fundamental development paradigms. Learn how TargetLink enables development of Adaptive AUTOSAR compliant control functions and their validation.

November 02, 2020: The technical challenges associated with advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous driving functions are steep. Engineering teams have to tackle an exorbitant number of development tasks with an extremely high level of confidence.

September 15, 2020: dSPACE offers a testing system, the Ultrasonic Sensor Test System (Lab), to stimulate the ultrasonic sensors over-the-air that doesn’t require any parts to move during runtime. The system is device-under-test (DUT) agnostic and can be coupled with the virtual dSPACE ASM Ultrasonic sensor model which uses rays to detect obstacles in a virtual environment.

June 24, 2020: In the early years of hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulation, about 20 years ago, everything was about real-time simulation. Today, HIL simulation and testing is much more than just real-time simulation. It is about distributed model development and integration processes, managing HIL farms, automated testing and ensuring functional safety. So, is real-time a relic from the early years, or is it still a critical factor?

June 01, 2020: When it comes to agile software development in the automotive industry, including additional integration levels and test stages from SIL into HIL in agile processes remains a major challenge. To tackle this, the dSPACE tool chain enables agile continuous processes by bringing the automation to the required level.

May 08, 2020: How great would it be to test object detection with ultrasonic parking sensors directly in the vehicle? Without any movement, neither by the vehicle itself nor any object in front or behind the vehicle. At dSPACE, we can offer this kind of test system – the Mobile Ultrasonic Sensor Test System.

February 6, 2020: As engineers, we often use the time domain as the main method to analyze the signals of our application. However, there are situations where using the time domain is not suitable, for example when attempting to analyze signal mixtures. In this case it’s essential to use the frequency domain and a method known as FFT, which can be implemented using ControlDesk.

November 11, 2019: The adoption of sophisticated technologies for autonomous vehicles, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and electrification are accelerating the implementation of new software at an unprecedented pace.

September 11, 2019: Over-the-Air testing of radar sensors that enable ADAS and highly autonomous driving functionality.

August 29, 2019: Onboard sensors are critical for autonomous vehicles to navigate the open road, but the real environment is full of obstacles. Everyday interferences such reflective surfaces, whiteout conditions, fog, rain, traffic congestion, and objects (i.e. pedestrians, parked vehicles, buildings, signs) clutter the atmosphere and can result in sensor misreads or false targets. 

June 13, 2019: Insider knowledge for your competitive edge in development. Read the blog article on the newest, ready-to-use integrated approach to tackle any challenge ahead with ease.

June 4, 2019: André Rolfsmeier, Lead Product Manager, Advanced Applications and Technologies at dSPACE GmbH, shared insights on how dSPACE is evolving to meet the requirements of autonomous driving at a recent dSPACE Tech Day event held in Novi, Michigan, USA.

February 15, 2019: Since 1999, TargetLink and the TargetLink team at dSPACE have been helping our customers worldwide to take highly efficient code into series production safely and quickly. In 2019, we have a special reason to celebrate: TargetLink is turning 20 years. 

February 11, 2019: Wouldn’t it be great if test cases could be freely exchanged during different development stages not only between different departments but also between companies or suppliers? 

December 13, 2018: Are you in the race towards engineering the automotive future by cloning the driver function? Now, you can accelerate your autonomous driving development and testing efforts in a well-thought-out, high-performance hardware and software environment. 

November 13, 2018:  You have acquired your first dSPACE system or have been tasked with using one and have little to no clue on how to get started? You are looking at this box with dSPACE written on it and you’re probably thinking: “Now what?”

This blog is intended to help you accelerate your learning curve when operating a dSPACE real-time system (for all systems after dSPACE Release 2017-B).

October 30, 2018: Version R18-10, the next specification of the AUTOSAR Adaptive Platform with a significantly extended range of functions, will be released at the end of October. For our customers, this poses the question how an adaptive control unit can be developed and validated in combination with classic ECUs and environment models.

October 15, 2018: dSPACE has developed a solution that simplifies the way you use AutomationDesk and allows you to author test cases and test steps faster and easier. The basis of this solution is the introduction of a standard test authoring framework (TAF). 

October 1, 2018: In the context of autonomous driving, everyone is talking about adaptive AUTOSAR, or the AUTOSAR Adaptive Platform. So expectations are high and they perfectly matched the eagerness with which dSPACE colleagues are already working to support “adaptive” in our software-in-the-loop tool chain.

September 19, 2018: One of the most critical steps to achieving full autonomy is ensuring the functional safety of the vehicle’s systems for automated driving. In an “eyes off, hands off” scenario, there is no tolerance for error. But when it comes to autonomous operation, how will safety requirements be validated?

August 21, 2018: With highly automated and autonomous driving as an ever-present topic, a new measure of validation has emerged: the number of kilometers, or miles, driven during test drives. In software-in-the-loop simulation, virtual ECUs (V-ECUs) have increasingly come up as devices under test in discussions of SIL experts during the last 18 months.

June 30, 2017: You will have to drive your autonomous prototype vehicle hundreds of millions of miles to test it against the seemingly endless number of traffic scenarios and requirements that are possible. Trying to accomplish that level of testing on the road is not realistic, but there is a better solution. 

dSPACE offers a complete solution for creating virtual test drives. 

May 29, 2017: ControlDesk is a powerful front-end tool that is used to interface the host PC to your dSPACE platform. At the task level, ControlDesk is primarily used to register your platform and create projects and experiments. Among its many benefits is a ready-to-go instrument library with built-in features that can be used very quickly to create custom experiments.

April 25, 2017: In recent years, the demand for advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and active safety systems has reached an unprecedented high. As companies in the automotive industry look to break into the autonomous vehicle market, engineers are spending much time and effort trying to integrate the large number of available sensors in a real-time manner. 

November 2, 2016: AUTOSAR is becoming increasingly popular in the North American automotive market. As a result, many companies are working on migrating their existing electronic control unit (ECU) software to AUTOSAR. This can often involve reworking much of the structure and rewriting the code in order to make it compliant to the standard. All of these changes need to be tested thoroughly and efficiently to guarantee that the code still functions the same as it previously did. 

October 12, 2016: As a dSPACE applications engineer, I have worked on projects that utilize many buses, including CAN, CAN FD, J1939, LIN, FlexRay, and any number of Ethernet variations, just to name a few. Embedded control systems are getting more and more complex, so distributed networks like these help modularize the systems and reduce in-vehicle wiring. Each of these networks has its own set of pros and cons, from data redundancy, bus speed, and bandwidth to reliability and cost. As a result, a combination of the buses can be found on any vehicle platform.

dSPACE has recently introduced a new tool to help manage the challenge of differing bus interfaces. 

September 12, 2016: Avionic software testing is among the most stringently mandated of all the domains within the embedded systems industry. As electrification and newer requirements for distance and comfort increase, the complexity of the aircraft increases. Consequently, the complexity of testing the related components increases tremendously.

Among the various methods of validating avionics software, hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) is generally recognized as the standard for reliable, flexible, and cost-efficient development. HIL is now commonplace for testing embedded systems across the industries, including the aerospace, automotive, and commercial vehicle industries.

July 5, 2016: How do you speed up the development of electronic systems that are becoming ever more complex?

Advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) have the potential to significantly reduce the number of road accidents by enhancing vehicle systems for safety. The ADAS market has developed from comfort systems designed for high speed highway driving to safety systems designed to operate in complex urban environments. This also leads to growing system complexity. 

May 17, 2016: The big transition to ADAS and autonomous vehicles is influencing everyone in the automotive industry. While we still continue to work on challenges in powertrains, electrification, battery systems and many other technologies, ADAS and Autonomous Vehicles seem to be at the center of attention. 

April 4, 2016: The oscilloscope has been an instrument of choice for engineers for a long time. However, with ever evolving technology and requirements, experimentation software such as dSPACE ControlDesk are providing visualization tools that are more capable and flexible.

February 12, 2016: As the Academic Sales Representative for North America at dSPACE, Inc. I am empathetic to the same series of issues from my customers who are seeking the best products on a limited budget: price, functionality and endurance. 

For over a decade, the solution was the dSPACE DS1103 controls prototyping system. In developing a new system, we took to heart some of the most desired upgrades, such as physical features, ease of connectivity, simplicity in connection to the host PC/laptop, documentation, etc., and brought to the market a brand new solution – the MicroLabBox (released in 2015).    

January 5, 2016: At dSPACE, we offer training for all the tools we provide ... for all levels of engineers – from new to highly experienced engineers. Our training classes are designed to give users that unique learning experience that shortens their learning curve significantly.

November 16, 2015: Power electronics are present almost everywhere, in electronic devices like personal computers, cell phone chargers and many more.

September 14, 2015: Ethernet offers a standard, cost-effective, high-speed technology to network devices like sensors and ECUs.

July 30, 2015: Model-based software development allows for the simulation of models on the host PC at an early stage and shorter development times. There are some preconditions that need to be met to generate a successful project.

June 3, 2015: SYNECT is a relatively new product in the dSPACE toolchain. It was introduced in 2012 and has been growing and developing in many ways since then. The concept of a global database to store items that are used for the Model-Based Development (MBD) process is not new , but there are relatively few tools out there today that do this in the MBD workspace. SYNECT is one of those tools … and more.

May 6, 2015: This article is not written for those who have a detailed knowledge of CAN clear down to stuff bits, termination, and physical layer topology. I’ve written this blog at a higher level and it is my hope that readers will be able to nod their heads with confidence and go “uh-huh” in a meeting where CAN and CAN FD are mentioned.

Can simulation be better than real-world vehicle testing? What is all this GPS simulation stuff and what can I do with it?

April 14, 2015: I used to read Bob Pease articles and he would always start with, “What’s All This Stuff, Anyhow?” Bob was an analog guru and he worked on the first reasonably, cost-effective, operational amplifier made for mass production. I start my blog with this title to pay tribute to Bob who was a legend in his own time. I bring this up because Bob died in a car accident in 2011 and the vision of the automotive industry eliminating cars from crashing into each other is starting to become a reality. It has moved from a futurist concept to real work being done in that direction in R&D labs around the world today.

March 06, 2015: In the Technical Support team at dSPACE Inc., we interact with customers on a daily basis to help them get up to speed with the many different products dSPACE makes and to provide solutions for any issues that might be encountered along the way.

November 13, 2014: Hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) test systems are increasingly being used in the development and testing of embedded software in new construction and agricultural vehicles. These off-highway vehicles are just as complex, if not more so, as their automotive counterparts. This is due to the increasing amount of embedded software used on-board the vehicle for the safe and reliable performance of these machines working in very demanding environments.

August 8, 2014: It seems everyone in today’s market is praising their high-quality products, but what does this actually mean? Is it a matter of great functionality? The fastest processor or the most features? Or is it simply people taking pride in what they are designing, building and delivering − because that ensures all the best ingredients for success. 

July 1, 2014: Model-based design (MBD) has proven to be the technology to manage complexity in system design. The advantages of using MBD to increase efficiency in development and reduce costs are quite well known. Combining the advantages of MBD together with advances in powerful semiconductor technology with flexible, fast-computing Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) open up a new field of possibilities, with very fast execution speeds leading to precision controls, for engineers to explore. 

June 4, 2014: The existence of system networks in airframes, satellites and other avionic implements have long included smart serialized communication between multiple components and systems. These systems started out with simple peer-to-peer serialized exchanges and have evolved into much more complex and high-speed multipoint networks. 

February 28, 2014: With the development in robust and increasingly inexpensive GPS, video and proximity sensing technology, along with the growth in computing performance of automotive grade microcontrollers, a new class of vehicle electronics has been made possible: one that makes it possible to reduce the reliance on the driver to execute the task of driving.

February 03, 2014: If you’re familiar with AUTOSAR, you’re probably aware of its benefits, such as maximizing code re-use, using off-the-shelf software stacks, and creating hardware-independent applications. But there may be one secret benefit of migrating to AUTOSAR that you aren’t familiar with − virtual validation.