Research project looks to automotive intelligence

An University of Greenwich product story

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Oct 3, 2006

The European Commission awarded GBP 212,000 to the University of Greenwich to carry out innovative research into dynamically self-configuring automotive systems.

"Intelligent" cars that can update their own computer software, diagnose their own faults and "talk" to their driver's mobile phones, personal organisers and satellite navigation systems could be on the way thanks to the European Commission which has awarded GBP 212,000 to the University of Greenwich to carry out innovative research in this field.

The university has teamed up with top motor manufactures Volvo and Daimler Chrysler, components giant Bosch, and five other partners to form a consortium which has been backed by a total grant of Eur 2.95 million from the Commission.

Computerised features such as cruise control, automatic windscreen wipers and headlights which turn themselves on when it gets dark are becoming increasingly common, even on mass market cars.

This smart technology makes life easier for motorists, and enables a degree of owner customisation, but the basic functionality is fixed.

As manufacturers come up with new features, and improve existing ones, they often can't upgrade systems on cars that are already on the road.

Now, the University of Greenwich is developing technology which will allow motor manufacturers to introduce new generations of these automotive control systems which can be automatically reconfigured.

"Imagine driving past a transmitter at the side of the motorway, which could automatically download your car manufacturer's latest software giving you the most up to date performance features", says Dr Richard Anthony from the Autonomics Research Group at the University of Greenwich.

"Imagine being able to take your mobile or personal organiser into your car and it being able to 'introduce' itself to all the other computerised features.

If that were possible, your satellite navigation system could automatically download your address book, your MP3 player could supply data for the audio system, and even a new device - something that hasn't been invented yet - could, in the future, interact with existing systems in your car.

Information (news, traffic, entertainment) could be filtered in context-specific ways depending on who is in the vehicle, where they are and where they are travelling to.

These are the sorts of clever, self-managing functions that we are working on".

Another advantage of these self-configuring software systems is that they have the potential to achieve fault-tolerance and performance optimisation by dynamically allocating roles to devices, and sharing the processing power and other resources of several devices.

"At the moment, many computerised systems in your car, such as central locking or air conditioning, run separately, so if a fault develops in one area, that whole system breaks down", says Dr Anthony.

"Our work effectively links different systems together so that in the event of a failure in one area, another system can step in to keep it running.

The Autonomics Research Group at the University of Greenwich is a new team within the School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences, which has established strengths in the fields of computer modelling and parallel processing.

Two new research assistants are to be recruited to the team to work on the EU-funded project, DySCAS (dynamically self-configuring automotive systems).