Mechatronics And The Software Challenges Yet To Come

Mechanical systems of today are becoming more capable with the integration of electronics and embedded software. However, this integration has brought a new level of complexity and the era when mechanical systems were strictly mechanical is rapidly coming to an end. These increasingly sophisticated products are generally referred to as "Mechatronics" [1]. This integration of electronics into mechanical systems is increasingly relying upon the quality of the software and it is becoming an integral part of modern products. This composition of electronics, mechanics and embedded software is found in many industries such as consumer products, telecommunications and in the automotive industry.

Interestingly, according to Andre Radon, Vice President of Product Lifecycle Management at Continental Automotive, the difference between a car producing 300 and 400 HP is the software algorithm driving the ECU [2]. With cars becoming more and more sophisticated and offering a safer driving experience, the structure and the complexity of the software is under constant evolution. According to Robert N. Charette in 2009, Alfred Katzenbach, the director of Information Technology Management at Daimler mentioned that the S-Class from Mercedes Benz navigation system had over 20 million lines of code with almost as many ECU as Airbus A380 [3].

In modern times, Mechatronics systems are increasingly facing the constraints of integrating the software design architecture. In views of Daniel Svensson and Ivica Crnkovic, the process faces two major problems which can lead to delayed production, increase in the design cost and also a devastating prospect of not having the product in the marketplace on the whole [4]. The first is the difficulty to effectively exchange information between different processes. This leads to additional development or maintenance costs, rescheduling of the launch due to delays and a potential decrease in the overall quality of the final product. According to Sousa, "Business opportunities are measured in months rather than years in this fast-paced field" [5]. The longer the process of development takes, the shorter the useful life of the device gets in the marketplace. Therefore, there is a large number of companies which are finding a strong need to integrate both processes and the information systems to not only fill the bridge between information exchange, but also to streamline product development and to ensure that the product reaches the marketplace on time. The second problem is the assumption that the "Software", unlike mechanics and electronics, is highly flexible and can be mould in form as desired. While mechanics and electronics systems has refined its standards and procedures over few centuries, the software development and its integration into Mechatronics is less mature. The inception of mechanics and electronics is hard to visualize entirely and requires iteration of identifying requirements, improvising the system development architecture and product testing before the final product is unveiled. In addition to that, the use of Product Data Management (PDM) in large projects has added another limitation in system comprising of mechanics, electronics and software as the software design is maintained separately by another domain called Software Configuration Management (SCM). This is not going to get any easy in the future as the hunger for technological advancement continues to grow and the size along with the communication between different domains is going to get larger.

According to a survey from Tech-Clarity in 2011, 86% of the participants believed that software is growing in volume, importance and innovation [2]. This result is as much valid today as it might have been in 2011. As an example, to tune a car engine of today, we do not require a traditional mechanic, but someone with integrated knowledge of how engine and associated electronics work together with the software complimenting the ECU [2]. While we celebrate our accomplishments, we can speculate how the future is going to change and the challenges it is going to present. The future of engineering accomplishments is likely to rely upon the ability successfully produce software marvels. From biomedical industry to aerospace, from consumer appliances to scientific research, many of the challenges in the coming decades will require the software to work at completely different scales and face the constraints which it has not yet encountered [6].

Until new millennium, the changes in electromechanical systems and integrated software were gradual. According to the writer of famous NI Lab Research blog, The Hadron Collider's fundamental software, which had over 20 million lines code, took almost 2 decades to develop [6]. At present, the health care insurance marketplace in US is reported to have nearly 500 million lines of code. In 1975, Frederick Brooks argues in his classical software project management book 'The Mythical Man-Month' that having a large group of development team is likely to hinder projects instead of making it quicker due to "non-linear overhead communication" [7]. Until today, we have seen that the biggest software breakthroughs are brought by small group of highly motivated individuals and the prominent examples are Facebook, Apple and also Microsoft. However, whether this pattern is going to continue or the complexity of the challenges of the future is going to make it work together and more effectively than ever is yet to be distinguished. The future challenges are going to be harsh when it comes to having a longer timeline to achieve the milestones. Therefore, the fundamental approach to design system architecture might need to be re-evaluated as the famous Waterfall, double Waterfall and even the Unified Modelling structure might not be able to cope with the increasing complexity and information exchange of upcoming requirements in electromechanical systems. References 1. Integrating Mechanical and Electronic Design Systems, White Paper, Innova Systems 2. Systems Engineering: Development of Mechatronics and Software Need to be Integrated Closely, White Paper, Parametric Technology Corporation (PTC). 3. http://spectrum.ieee.org/transportation/systems/this-car-runs-on-code. (18-03-2015) 4. Svensson, Crnkovic, Information Management for Multi-Technology Products (2002), International Design Conference - Design 2002. 5. Balan, Sousa, Satyanarayanan, Meeting the Software Engineering Challenges of Adaptive Mobile Application (2003), School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsgurgh. 6. http://blog.ninlabs.com/2013/12/software-engineering-the-next-50-years/ (22-03-2015) 7. http://readwrite.com/2007/10/16/the_future_of_software_development (22-03-15)