AdaCore today announced last month that IHI Corporation of Japan has chosen AdaCore’s QGen Model Verifier, a part of its QGen model-based engineering toolsuite, along with AdaCore’s expert support, to help them develop a safe and reliable autonomous truck system in a cost-effective manner.
Automakers are leading the charge to develop autonomous trucks; however, deployments have been slow because of the unique safety requirements and cost involved with developing this equipment. To address both of these challenges, IHI and its partners are developing a system that can retrofit existing truck fleets to transport goods around factories autonomously.
The autonomous control units in these vehicles control various critical operations, including the gas and brake pedals, the steering wheel, and the position, speed, and obstacle sensors. These control units must be extremely reliable for automated trucks to travel along pre-programmed indoor and outdoor routes safely.
To streamline their development, IHI decided to evaluate the QGen model-based engineering toolsuite for Simulink and Stateflow, in particular the QGen Model Verifier, to ensure that the models would operate correctly within a safe Simulink subset. Originally, IHI used models containing a significant amount of MATLAB code rather than Simulink blocks. As part of this evaluation, AdaCore recommended that IHI change their MATLAB code into Simulink blocks to allow the QGen verifier to analyze their model more deeply. IHI ultimately decided to adopt this approach and to use AdaCore’s QGen Model Verifier for Simulink to help validate their safety-critical system.
According to the IHI Technology & Intelligence Integration Center, “We are developing an autonomous transport system using Simulink models. AdaCore’s QGen Model Verifier automates model validation tasks that require expertise, allowing us to focus on system sophistication.”
“AdaCore is thrilled that IHI has selected our QGen toolsuite to help develop its safety-critical autonomous truck system,” said JC Bernedo, AdaCore QGen team lead. “By using our QGen Model Verifier, part of our model-based engineering toolsuite, IHI software developers will save countless hours of testing and verification efforts, and reduce costs, while providing additional safety guarantees to its transportation customers.”
AdaCore continues to advise IHI and its partners as they test their new system’s safety, functionality, and performance with plans to commercialize it.