Systemize Development in the Automotive Industry

Udo Gohier, MathWorks Central Europe country manager, explains in an interview with Alfred Vollmer, editor-in-chief of Automobil Elektronik, which strategy MathWorks is pursuing in the automotive sector.

The focus of the interview is on systemizing the development in the context of topics such as software-defined vehicles, electrification, and migration of the development process to the engineering cloud. In addition, key challenges in the automotive environment are addressed such as increasing system complexity, diversity of development tools and workflows, compatibility of safety with autonomous driving and connectivity, and the importance and feasibility of early testing of software.

Key messages:

• Different approaches to software development, such as model-based and agile, must be merged and automated. For MathWorks, these are the fundamentals of a state-of-the-art, systematic development process.
• Risks must be avoided by means of consistent continuity in the tool chains.
• Cybersecurity is another extremely important area, because there is no vehicle safety without security. We have developed appropriate tools for greater security with our Polyspace^® products—motivated by safety issues.
• Software and hardware development must be decoupled; systems engineering and software engineering staff must learn to understand each other and work together.