FlexRay: the key to smarter cars

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It won't be long before our cars won't need drivers at all, writes PAUL OWEN.

When our cars start driving themselves, well remember the 2007 BMW X5 as the vehicle that introduced a new electronic protocol that made such a convenience possible.

For the X5 of three years ago marked the debut of FlexRay (FR), a new faster smarter bus system that allowed more data to flow between automotive electronic control units (ECUs), along with improved accuracy and reliability.

Although the X5 limited FR-based technology to just the management of its adaptive suspension and more sophisticated stability control, subsequent new-generation luxury cars like the BMW 7 series, Audi A8, and Bentley Mulsanne have widened the application of the technology to introduce far more electronic driver assistance than previous models.

Soon, the cleverness of our cars will be judged on whether they developed prior to the introduction of FR, or after it.

For FlexRay so expands the bandwidth of a car's internal electronic communications, it enables engineers to pack in lots more computing power.

On the new Audi A8 introduced to the New Zealand market last month, the use of FlexRay enabled the electronic boffins to load no less than 95 ECUs into the car, each linked by three kilometres of fibre- optic cabling.

The speed and accuracy of the data flow between these 95 mini-computers enabled the A8 to sport a host of new safety, comfort, and convenience features, and match the equally- smart 2009 BMW 7 series virtually selling-point-for-selling-point.

The new kit included intelligent headlights that automatically dip to low beam when the A8 senses an oncoming vehicle, a night vision camera that warns the driver of oncoming hazards before they can be seen, a radar-guided cruise control that can brake the vehicle to a complete halt if required, and a crash preparation system that adjusts the seatbelts to optimum tension, closes any open windows or sunroof, and helps the driver out with any need to apply the brakes in an emergency.

It is predicted that FR-based electronics will soon allow engineers to dispense with the steering column that often causes carnage in car accidents because all driver inputs will be transferred to the car by wire.

When the car/driver interface becomes completely electronic, the provision of a robotic chauffeur mode will be an easy step thanks to the added accuracy that FlexRay can give to GPS guidance systems.

Next month, Stanford University hope to send a driverless Audi TTS up Pikes Peak, Colorado, at competitive hill-climb speed to demonstrate the progress of a project funded by four car-makers, an initiative made possible by the data transfer speeds permitted by FlexRay.

Development of FlexRay began in 2000 when a consortium of seven core members formed to establish a standard communications protocol on which to found the growth of new electronic automotive technologies.

The four car makers in the early days of the consortium BMW, General Motors, Daimler Chrysler, and Volkswagen defined the requirements of FlexRay and guided the development of the new protocol by the three electronic firms in the partnership Bosch, Freescale, and Philips.

In 2005, the specifications of the new system were announced. It offered two channels of communication between automotive ECUs, each capable of transferring data at 10mega-bits per second.

An early challenge to FlexRay was the development of a competing electronic protocol technology called TTP by another consortium of car makers.

New firms were given access to FlexRay including high-volume Asian car makers; Toyota, Nissan, Honda and Hyundai.

The widening of the membership of the consortium ensured that it now included the makers of seven of every 10 cars produced, and cemented the role FlexRay has to play as the future platform of all new electronic automotive developments.

At the moment the use of FlexRay is restricted by cost, and many predict that it will never fully replace CAN-bus electronic communications in our cars.

Even the new A8 carts seven separate CAN-bus networks to manage systems that don't require FlexRay's high data transfer speeds.

However it is equally easy to predict that FlexRay will play a huge role in the development of the alternative powertrains that will release the car from its dependence upon the energy stored cheaply and easily in fossil fuel.

In a future mobilised by electric vehicles, hydrogen, and bacteria-sourced biofuel, we may even speak of the 2007 BMW X5 in the same terms of reverence that 20th Century motoring commentators reserved for the 1907 Ford Model T, as the vehicle that defined all the cars that followed it.

- © Fairfax NZ News