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The new Ricardo rCube product offers a highly specified, versatile, powerful and robust hardware platform on which vehicle electronics systems and control software of the future can be prototyped and developed.

Widely acknowledged as driving up to 90 per cent of the functional innovation in new vehicles, automotive electronics and its associated control software represents an increasing engineering challenge for automakers. New sensors, actuators and controllers are being added to all parts of the car for applications as diverse as powertrain control, infotainment, active safety and drive-by-wire systems. This increasing complexity is leading manufacturers to consider new forms of both centralised and network-based electronic control architectures for their future vehicles.

The demands placed on the electronic controllers required for such architectures are likely to be more rigorous than those of today, requiring more processing power, more memory, multiple communications protocols, operating systems and software partitioning. In order to enable the development of control systems which need these criteria, Ricardo has developed its rCube advanced rapid prototyping platform which is now available to customers.

Housed in a rugged aluminium enclosure and designed for repeated use in harsh automotive development environments, rCube combines very high performance computing power with a comprehensive range of interfaces to industry standard communications formats, software and simulation tools.

Particular applications which rCube is targeted at include the development of fault-tolerant systems for safety-critical applications, integrated vehicle dynamics, 42V or dual voltage systems, drive-by-wire applications and advanced engine and transmission control including model-based systems based on real-time cylinder pressure measurements.

Designed to be adaptable for a number of operational formats, rCube is specified with a wide range of input/output (I/O) options with software configurable for sensor interfaces, event triggers and numerous general digital and analogue links.

According to Richard Wenham, Ricardo director of powertrain control & electronics, "rCube is an exciting development which offers considerable power and interface capacity. We are seeing increasing interest from our customers in advanced model-based active safety and high data-fusion projects that benefit from the robust high performance and networking capability that the system offers."

Key features of rCube:

Dual PowerPC microcontrollers

Wide power supply range (6-50V)

Available in two variants; high end with dual PowerPC microcontrollers with >500MIPS performance and 42V input capability; low end with single microcontroller and 14V nominal input

100Mbps communication interfaces

Automotive standard communication interfaces, CAN, Linbus, ISO9141

Integrated with industry standard software development tools

Software configurable multiple discrete I/O types

Robust automotive packaging

Connector system designed for repeated mating cycles and harsh environment use

Typical applications of rCube:

Advanced engine and transmission control

Fault-tolerant systems for safety-critical applications

Integrated vehicle dynamics

X-by-wire applications

Cylinder pressure based engine control