Functional development of Driver Information Module using Simulink

Abstract: Safety seat-belt reminder software provides appropriate alerts -including gong sound alarm,visual indication and text messages- with the intention of reminding the passengers of usingseat buckles in a car. The current thesis report elaborates on the procedure of functionaldevelopment of the mentioned software for Volvo Car Corporation (VCC) which is anautomotive manufacturing industry in Sweden.

Generally speaking, developing the seat-belt reminder software is initiated from extractingthe software specifications according to a number of fixed and definite functionalrequirements. The specification document is handed to the code supplier based on whichthe final software is programmed. However, those pre-defined requirements are likely to bealtered during the software life cycle. The new changes, during the development, areevaluated and then the decision will be made based on the severity and the complexity ofthose requirements to be implemented. If the new requirements are simple to implement thesupplier includes them in the current software under development otherwise therequirements will be delivered within the next release.

In order to prevent the negative effects of mentioned changes, an idea can be simulating thepreliminary requirements using the Simulink, generating the automatic code usingEmbedded Coder tool and consequently testing the first iteration code. This innovative ideaprovides VCC with detecting the probable faults together with analyzing the feasibility ofnew functionalities.

The current thesis report presents the development stages of the Simulink model, automaticcode generation for target systems as well as validation of the generated code. In additionhere, we compare two software development process models, V-model and model-baseddesign, considering the advantages and disadvantages with respect to the driver informationsystem (DIS) development. As a result, we develop the safety seat-belt reminder softwareusing model-based design.