Engineers have struggled with closing this gap for decades. However, with their latest move to collaborate, Renesas and MathWorks plan to transform the process by accelerating the transition from simulation to hardware amid an artificial-intelligence-driven engineering revolution. This may only be the beginning of something big.
The problem faced by both automotive and industrial engineering development groups: the discrepancy between simulation and real hardware. Systems were designed and tested in simulation, but getting them to run on real hardware required painstaking integration to fit all the necessary tools into place before testing could commence. With today’s vehicles becoming more software-defined and the industry becoming more complex, this has become an essential bottleneck.
Renesas and MathWorks believe this particular bottleneck can no longer continue. In an exclusive conversation with us, Anuja Apte, India Product Marketing Manager, MathWorks, and Nachiket Hardas, Director and Application Engineering, Renesas, stated that the latest partnership was geared towards eliminating the problems encountered when connecting the two worlds of simulation and hardware. It would no longer be necessary for engineers to devote weeks just to connecting the required tools and configuring the software to match the hardware platform.
What distinguishes the initiative from other developments in the field is the industry’s evolution in that direction. The companies noted that the current trend in engineering teams is to move away from code-based approaches and toward model-based development. In this approach, verified system models are used as reusable components across many different products. The reason behind such an approach lies in the complexity of the software itself, shorter time frames for product delivery, and the advent of software-defined vehicles, robotics, and automation.
The point emphasised by both companies is that the truly innovative aspect is not the rapid creation of code. Instead, engineers can now identify integration problems and defects at the system level early in the process, before they become expensive hardware problems. Another problem developing within the industry is the loss of corporate knowledge as experienced engineers leave organisations.
For the future, both firms believe that AI will significantly help streamline engineering processes; however, neither expects full autonomy in development. They see a future in which AI will handle all repetitive implementation steps, while engineers can focus on system architecture, design, verification, and critical safety decisions. This partnership might also reveal what will come next for the industry: simulation-based development, digital twins, validation, and AI-assisted engineering workflows operating as a single, closed loop.
Although the parties have not yet shared any information about their customers, confirmation is provided that some customers are already adopting their solution. In the near future, new versions of the solution are planned for release, covering more hardware platforms. But perhaps, even more importantly, this development does not tell us about a product per se. What it says is that in the future, engineers can spend way less time solving integration problems and much more time building intelligent machines.
For more detailed information, stay tuned!
