Seats in Automotive are becoming a complex element in the vehicle design due to the increasing demand of comfort and safety. Besides movements (tilt, slide, backrest, lift), seats can also feature ventilation, heating, air conditioning, easy-entry, position memorization/recall and perform massages. All this requires knowledge of both mechatronics and vehicle integration that were not needed in the past.
The customer has to design and manufacture a Seat Control Unit (SCU) for a new vehicle, requiring support on software design and development. The SCU receives commands through buttons and CAN network, it actuates motors and stores user-defined positions. It forwards other commands to a slave LIN ECU for additional functionalities.
EMA worked with the customer to define the requirements and established the best design for the software in terms of resource allocation, reliability and performance. Model Based Software Design has been used to accelerate time-to-market and some physical prototypes of the seat have been set up.
