Case Study: Vehicle Systems Integration achieves rapid hardware-in-the-loop simulator development and reduced costs with MathWorks

Vehicle Systems Integration Designs Hardware-in-the-Loop Simulator for the U.S. Department of Transportation

Vehicle Systems Integration needed to build a hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulator for a U.S. Department of Transportation heavy‑truck networking study to integrate and test dozens of electronic control units (ECUs) without costly track trials. To run models across multiple networked target PCs using off‑the‑shelf hardware and varied vendor I/O cards, VSI turned to MathWorks tools—primarily Simulink, Simulink Coder, and Simulink Real‑Time—to meet the challenge.

Using MathWorks software, VSI modeled and validated each major truck subsystem in Simulink, auto-generated C with Simulink Coder, and ran the distributed real‑time simulation on Athlon-based target PCs with CAN networking and third‑party I/O via Simulink Real‑Time. The MathWorks-based solution produced a 1 kHz multiprocessor HIL system, cut development time from months to weeks (hardware running in under two weeks), enabled design changes in minutes (under three minutes per target, under seven for all six), and reduced costs by finding integration problems in the lab.

Vehicle Systems Integration

Larry Long

Co-Founder