The MathWorks says automotive engineers can now verify compliance with IEC-61508 (safety systems) and The MathWorks Automotive Advisory Board (MAAB) modeling standards within Simulink. At SAE 2008 in Detroit, the company also announced version 2.0 of the MAAB’s Control Algorithm Modeling Guidelines for MATLAB, Simulink and Stateflow, and earlier it noted that the R2008a releases of Simulink and Real-Time Workshop Embedded Coder include support for import and export of AUTOSAR Software component descriptions and generation of AUTOSAR compliant production code.

Simulink Verification and Validation software (www.mathworks.com/products/simverification/) version 2.3 automatically evaluates and verifies system models for compliance with those standards as well as with DO-178B. New model-checking features also extend the existing support available within Simulink Verification and Validation for customer-developed modeling guidelines.

Engineering organizations use modeling guidelines as a best practice to improve readability, increase maintainability, and encourage reuse, while guarding against modeling errors. Typically, modeling guidelines are verified through visual inspection of models and related documentation during design reviews. According to The MathWorks, organizations can reduce or eliminate time-consuming and error-prone manual verification by using Simulink Verification and Validation to capture their internal guidelines and automatically check their models.

The Model Advisor also checks for other attributes, such as model consistency and code-generation compatibility. Engineers can use the customization API in Simulink Verification and Validation to develop their own modeling checks, using MATLAB scripts, and register them with Model Advisor for automatic execution.

“Modeling-standards compliance is crucial to the overall development process,” said Jon Friedman, aerospace, defense, and automotive marketing manager at The MathWorks. “Many users already employ Simulink Verification and Validation to check their designs against their own modeling guidelines as a core part of their development process. Now, engineers can use the same tools to ensure that their models meet the DO-178B, IEC-61508, and MAAB standards for data types, diagnostics, code generation, and safety, without having to spend critical staff-hours on repetitive manual review work.”

Information on version 2.0 of the MAAB’s Control Algorithm Modeling Guidelines for MATLAB, Simulink and Stateflow is available at www.mathworks.com/industries/auto/maab.html/. “By leveraging these guidelines and extending them with company- or project-specific rules, automotive engineering teams can build and manage models for specification exchange, simulation, automatic code generation, documentation, and test definition,´Friedman explained. “Teams can generate designs that are reusable, easy to integrate, and consistent with proprietary or industry-standard guidelines.”

AUTOSAR enhancements in the R2008a releases of Simulink and Real-Time Workshop Embedded Coder eliminate the need for engineers to introduce new blocksets or tools in order to support AUTOSAR. Software Component descriptions generated by AUTOSAR authoring tools, such as DaVinci Tool Suite from Vector Informatik, can be automatically imported into Simulink to design and implement the functionality of the component. No structural changes to the model are needed. As a result, a single Simulink model can be used as a golden reference throughout the development process for simulation, rapid prototyping, and production code generation in both AUTOSAR and non-AUTOSAR environments.

After the component is modeled and designed, AUTOSAR compliant code can be automatically generated using the newest release of Real-Time Workshop Embedded Coder. To validate the generated code and test it against the reference model behavior, software-in-the-loop testing is supported by automatically configuring and generating an interface to the code that routes the simulation data using the AUTOSAR Runtime Environment API calls.

Friedman said that in addition to the component, an updated AUTOSAR Software Component description is automatically generated, enabling the component to be integrated with the AUTOSAR Runtime Environment (RTE) and AUTOSAR Basic Software.