The Line Within: Redrawing the Boundary of Connected Vehicle Systems Engineering 2010-01-2322

The interdisciplinary and structured integration of subsystems into a functioning whole is at the root of Systems Engineering. Until recently in the automotive market, much of this has been specific to an automotive subdomain such as Telematics, Infotainment, Chassis Control, or Engine Management Systems. In the realm of Telematics and Connected Vehicles, the recent trend has been outward from the vehicle, focusing on expanding connectivity and data sources. Systems Engineering for Telematics now includes multiple transports spanning PAN, WLAN, and WAN communications, and beyond that has grown to include entities on the far side of the network link, including data servers, aggregation portals, and network security.

Although it was not trivial for Continental to develop the embedded Telematics connectivity subsystems for products such as General Motors Corporation/OnStar®, Ford SYNC®, BMW Assist™, and Mercedes Tele Aid®, consumer and regulatory expectations are rendering inadequate the artificial boundary of an embedded connectivity domain for new automotive systems.

For example, reducing vehicle weight is a common approach in the effort to improve fuel efficiency, and weight targets have been cascaded down to each subsystem and module. However, for each 100 pound weight reduction for passenger vehicles (and without corresponding changes to other vehicles or additional safety technologies), NHTSA and other studies have indicated the effect of hundreds of additional fatalities per year in the United States. With both safety goals and US CAFE fuel efficiency goals to meet, the design and interaction of many previously unrelated subsystems in the vehicle become key factors, and in particular, the new interaction between vehicle connectivity subsystems with vehicle safety and performance subsystems.

For this discussion, we take a systems view of the evolving field of vehicle connectivity, review the historical trends, introduce a framework to analyze several human constraints, and use the framework to identify ideal characteristics in a modern vehicle system.