Detect my Current LocationTech talk: how software is replacing purely mechanical systems in cars
At its annual Tech Day event held in Renningen, German tech giant Bosch showcased its advanced by-wire solutions for future vehicles.
Published On Sep 14, 2024 09:30:00 AM
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An actuator-based steering system decouples the column from the steering gear, managing tight manoeuvres and isolating the steering wheel from road shocks.
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If you are asked to name a big technological transformation taking place in the auto industry, you will most likely say ‘electrification’. Some may say ‘connected cars’. But there is an even more fundamental change in vehicle design that serves as the bedrock upon which edifices of electrification and connected vehicles are being built: software-defined vehicles or SDVs.
Under this paradigm, automakers are replacing purely mechanical systems in vehicles with electronic systems driven by software. Increasingly, a vehicle’s functions and features, including powertrain, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), braking and steering, are being driven by software rather than traditional mechanical systems.
The use of software-controlled systems enables greater flexibility, updateability and customisation of vehicle performance and capabilities, as well as over-the-air (OTA) updates. This allows manufacturers to improve vehicle performance, add new features, and address issues without physical servicing.
Cars will feel like new for longer, thanks to software updates, the rollout of which would be a matter of days. It won’t take years to implement new functions in existing vehicles. This also means that manufacturers can shorten their product development cycles, respond to market feedback quicker and leverage economies of scale to offer vehicles at competitive prices amid cut-throat competition.
“We are standing at the dawn of the SDV age,” said Markus Heyn, board member and chairman of the Mobility business segment at Bosch, the world’s largest auto components maker. The company expects SDVs to be introduced at a broad scale from 2025 and plans to have solutions for vehicle categories, starting from e-bikes and motorbikes to cars and heavy commercial vehicles.
Out of the 48,000 software engineers working at Bosch, over 42,000 are developing software for current and future vehicles. Heyn said there will be close collaboration between manufacturers and suppliers for the development of vehicle software.
He explained that for an SDV to be updateable, its E/E architecture must not be complex; as a result, Bosch aims to reduce the number of electronic control units in a vehicle to 10 by 2030, thereby also reducing the cost.
“We believe that in this architecture of less than 10 ECUs, there might be up to 5 HPCs (high-performance computers) that could be central computers, also located centrally, while there will be other high-performance computers – christened zonal computers – and located in specific zones, thereby reducing the number of cables inside vehicles. This is how these computers will distribute various tasks among themselves,” Heyn noted.
Bosch chairman Stefan Hartung even went as far as calling software “the driving force” behind all of the company’s business verticals. “While software is not new, our focus so far was on small software products such as airbag modules. But we are now going to grow software with standalone software development,” he said.
At this year’s Bosch Tech Day in June, held at its R&D headquarters in Renningen, near Stuttgart in Germany, Bosch presented its latest solutions from its Vehicle Motion (VM) domain encompassing both hardware and embedded software by-wire technologies.
The event premiered some of Bosch’s most advanced and innovative solutions in the areas of vehicle dynamics; many of these would make their way into our future automobiles.We got first-hand experience of the company’s latest innovations demonstrated at a test track near its salubrious R&D facility. Here’s what we witnessed.
Steer-by-wire
In the first demo in a Volkswagen Golf GTI, the mechanical connection between the car’s steering column and steering gear was removed. The new system, which now combines a steering wheel and a steering-rack actuator, uses precise sensor technology to detect the driver’s steering request and transmits it digitally to the steering-rack actuator, which then steers the wheels accordingly.
The steering-wheel actuator also creates an artificial steering feel to give the driver feedback based on the road surface. Furthermore, vibrations, such as those from ruts or potholes, can be partially or totally filtered out, damped, or even amplified, depending on the automaker’s calibration requirements.
Bosch said the benefits of this steering system – devoid of any mechanical linkages – are that it makes it possible to position the steering wheel to suit the individual driver perfectly or, in the case of highly automated vehicles, to even stow away the steering wheel for a limited time.
Brake-by-wire
Comprising a brake-by-wire actuator and an electronic stability programme (ESP) module, this new Bosch braking system does away with the mechanical connection between the brake pedal and the braking system.
By virtue of fail-safe electronic signal lines, the braking request is transmitted from an electronic brake pedal to the brake-by-wire actuator and the ESP system. The interplay of these two components ensures that the system brakes more dynamically in all conditions.
In the event of an error, both the brake-by-wire actuator and ESP can build up the required braking pressure at all four wheels. Therefore, by eliminating the mechanical connection between the brake pedal and braking system, new possibilities open up for designing the vehicle’s interior and the human-machine interface, which includes the seating layout and ergonomics.
Act-by-wire
It is a system that combines brake-by-wire and steer-by-wire technologies, thus enabling greater standardisation in braking and steering. The system allows space-efficient installation of actuators to liberate more cabin room and enables better crash optimisation.
Furthermore, it improves the vehicle’s noise, vibration and harshness characteristics as it opens the possibility of replacing the conventional brake pedal with new designs, thereby allowing the pedal travel distance to be reduced or even eliminated.
By-wire brake pedal
In this setup, the traditional brake pedal is replaced by a fail-safe brake-by-wire pedal that detects the braking request through sensors and transmits it to the braking system as an electrical signal. Apart from offering more possibilities for innovatively packaging the interior and allowing flexible integration of various components, the brake-by-wire brake pedal system will help make the driving experience safer, more relaxed, and more personalised, said Bosch.
Ebrake To Zero
The most innovative showcase at the event was the ‘eBrake to zero’ concept that deploys software in an electric vehicle to offer a jolt-free braking experience as the vehicle draws to a standstill. The company claims that this will make braking in stop-and-go traffic significantly more pleasant and comfortable for vehicle occupants and thereby alleviate their motion sickness. The function, demonstrated in an all-electric Jaguar I-Pace, also noticeably improved vehicle noise during braking.
By optimally controlling an electric vehicle’s motor and braking system, the feature ensures that the electric motor brings the vehicle to a standstill smoothly, without any need for the hydraulic brakes to intervene. Even if they are needed, occupants will not notice the transition from motor to hydraulic brakes due to the seamless calibration of the combined system.
Data-based services
Bosch’s portfolio of cloud- and data-based services under the VMM (vehicle motion management) domain also includes a ‘road perception’ service. This function uses the vehicle’s sensor data to generate information about the road’s state and friction coefficients. The information is relayed in real-time to the cloud and merged with information from other vehicles. With the help of that and forecasts from weather services, the system can warn drivers about hazards such as aquaplaning, ice, potholes and speed bumps.
The company said these services can also be used to automatically adjust vehicle dynamics in bends as well as the driving strategy of the safety and assistance systems. The IoT-insights-enabled service aims to offer enhanced safety and a more comfortable drive.
Vehicle Motion Management (VMM)
The last of the demonstrations, in a Porsche Cayenne, was about the advances in VMM. This suite of software systems controls a vehicle’s motion in all six degrees of movement, coordinating the braking, steering, powertrain and suspension systems.
In a Moose test on the track, the VMM controlled the Cayenne’s dynamic systems, including the suspension, by not just keeping the SUV’s four wheels on the ground but also doing so in an extremely smooth and controlled manner – well beyond what the current ESP systems manage.
Bosch said this not only enhances safety and ride comfort but also reduces complexity in new vehicle architectures as it works on the central vehicle computer to take control of all the diverse actuators across the vehicle’s dynamic systems.
Most of these advanced solutions are still under development and testing phases at Bosch, and could only be expected to undergo commercialisation, first in Europe around 2026-27. The company said it is already working closely with some prospective manufacturer customers.
Hands-free driving: a near-term reality
Apart from the mega technological showcase of its software-oriented vehicle motion solutions, Bosch also demonstrated the progress it has made in autonomous driving technology, which it is developing in conjunction with Volkswagen’s subsidiary Cariad.
The two German majors joined hands to form the Automated Driving Alliance in 2022 and have been working closely to develop software solutions to offer car drivers extensive assistance with driving tasks. The company said they are adopting a data-driven approach to develop state-of-the-art autonomous driving software that is modular and scalable and aims to offer capabilities such as hands-free driving and active lane-change support – ranging from Level 0 to Level 3 ADAS functionalities.
While features such as adaptive cruise control and lane-keep assist, which belong to the Level 2 ADAS category, are amply available in several cars in the market, the Level 2+ and Level 3 systems are emerging technologies.
Level 2+ automation refers to a system that can manage both steering and acceleration but requires the driver to remain engaged with driving tasks and be ready to take control when needed. In Level 3, the system can take over all driving functions on the freeway without the continuous supervision of the driver, who must be available to take over if the system requests intervention.
Bosch demonstrated these semi-autonomous driving functions in a Volkswagen ID. Buzz and an Audi Q8. Both were kitted with radars, multiple cameras around the vehicle and lidar sensors to generate a continuous stream of 4D imagery of the vehicle’s surroundings. In addition, a high-performance computer placed in the boot was processing the entire sensor data in real-time and running complex embedded algorithms to enable the vehicle to chart its own, safe course through the crowded streets and freeways around Stuttgart.
As two Bosch engineers – one each from its Vehicle Motion and Perception teams – took to the front seats on this all-electric ID. Buzz, we got to sit in the rear to experience this semi-autonomous driving in a real-world environment. With a pre-defined destination in the vehicle navigation system connected to the cloud, we started our way out of the Bosch campus.
Once on the move, the perception devices – cameras, lidars and imaging radars – identified objects on the road to constantly monitor the dynamic vehicle surroundings. In an autonomous system, this real-time data is fused and overlapped on the autonomous driving software for the vehicle to make instantaneous decisions and drive autonomously.
We saw the ID. Buzz merge safely into the main freeway section, come to a complete halt at a traffic signal and change lanes on its own to bypass slower traffic at the flick of the indicator stalk. The driver’s hands were off the steering wheel for the most part.
From next year, all new Volkswagen Group cars in Europe will be equipped with partially or highly automated driving functions, offering the convenience of hands-free driving and making driving safer and more relaxed, particularly in urban environments. Artificial intelligence and deep-learning models are being used extensively to train algorithms with humongous amounts of data from varied road scenarios, including temporary construction diversions.
The idea is that vehicles will automatically take drivers to their destinations along a pre-defined route in the navigation system that is connected and updated regularly. A glimpse of the technology in some of Volkswagen’s existing production models allayed most apprehensions about the real-world possibility of a vehicle driving on its own without much driver intervention. The cars were capable enough to take left and right turns and even safely manoeuvre through traffic intersections.
The company said it expects to see these systems’ deployment strategically expand across Europe, the US, and the world over. It appears then that software is all set to take control of the wheel and pedals. We only have to be ready to let go.
Volkswagen Cars
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