The Volkswagen driver assistance concept resulted from a joint project of Volkswagen, Smart Microwave Sensors, Altera and TTTech Automotive. These companies collaborated very closely to prove that a more flexible system architecture for driver assistance systems could be realized with FlexRay than with CAN. With their focus on achieving standard conformance and cost savings in the final production of the system, they deployed FlexRay and AUTOSAR solutions. TTTech Automotive was responsible for the development of AUTOSAR standard software, integration of the FlexRay IP and also supported the system integration.
As more and more driver assistance applications are finding their way into the mainstream market, two driver assistance systems were included in a prototype car based on the current Volkswagen Touareg: a Lane Change Assistant and an Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC).
The project demonstrated that FlexRay controller and radar applications could be efficiently integrated on one single chip. It was possible to convert a CAN-based system into a FlexRay-based system. The FlexRay system was successfully introduced into a close-to-series application with the Volkswagen standard software. The use of a FlexRay-based system resulted in a significant cost reduction due to the elimination of expensive digital signal processing. This was possible by removing functionality from the sensor slaves and taking advantage of the available bandwidth of FlexRay. |
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"For all partners of the project it was clear to get as close as possible to a standardized, close-to-series solution. TTTech Automotive's expertise with FlexRay considerably contributed to that objective."
Dr. Martin Döring
Teamlead FlexRay
Volkswagen AG |
