THIEN eDrives (formerly ATB Technologies) has used MATLAB and Simulink software from MathWorks to model, simulate and implement an electric motor control system on TI’s C2000 microcontroller unit (MCU).
According to MathWorks, taking a Model-Based Design approach enabled Thien eDrives to move rapidly from the first prototype to the final series, reducing development time by 50 percent.
Thien eDrives was developing an electric drive for a fuel cell vehicle compressor unit, including the motor control software, electronics, motor, and other mechanical components.
While juggling all the factors associated with normal product development, Thien eDrives also had to cope with the fact that electric drive projects are becoming more complex as they require the many components within a system to work together for maximum performance and efficiency
It wanted a design approach that enabled early verification of control strategies, code generation, and rapid design iterations throughout the project. Model-Based Design allowed for verification at multiple stages of development.
Automatic code generation eliminated the time-consuming and error-prone hand-coding process while providing added confidence of compliance with certain MISRA C standards.
Thien eDrives customers was also about to review the designs with the models more easily, without having to go through code review-driven processes.
While Thien eDrives previously simulated and verified designs in Simulink, the automatic code generation used this time enabled the company to complete the compressor project twice as fast as a similar project that applied Model-Based Design with hand coding.
In short, code generation resulted in fewer bugs, better quality, and faster iterations, and it enabled a modular approach that facilitated model reuse across projects.