Conference features automotive software integrity

An Institution of Engineering and Technology product story

Edited by the Electronicstalk editorial team Mar 4, 2005

The IEE is bringing together an international audience of automotive and semiconductor manufacturers, academics and decision makers at the IEE Automotive Electronics Conference.

Experts predict that in the next ten years nearly 90% of technical innovation within the auto industry will take place in automotive electrical systems and that electronic technology represents the future of the automotive industry.

To review the dynamic global developments in advanced electronics technologies for automobiles, the IEE is bringing together an international audience of automotive and semiconductor manufacturers, academics and decision makers at the IEE Automotive Electronics Conference at Savoy Place, London, on 15th and 16th March 2005.

The conference will run over two days and will examine aspects of automotive engineering that electronics is enhancing including motors and power electronics, embedded systems, advanced vehicle electrical architectures, and vehicle highway communications.

The beginning of the 21st century will see the industry's focus move from mechanical engineering to electrical and electronic engineering dominance.

This transition is driven by environmental consumer and technology trends, and is causing the exponential growth of digital electronic control and software complexity within the vehicles.

Automotive customers will not accept the level of software quality currently experienced by digital device users (PCs, mobile phones, PDAs etc) because the consequences of many of their failure modes for an automobile are so much more significant.

Richard Parry Jones, CTO of Ford Motor Company, will address issues of software reliability and safety in the Lord Austin lecture at 1800 GMT on Tuesday 15th March at Savoy Place.

As head of Ford's technical staff of some 30,000 engineers, scientists, designers and business professional around the world, Parry Jones will suggest that the industry needs to move away from the current 'scenario based' quality engineering techniques to find a new hazard-based approach to quality engineering for software.

Within his speech, he will present an alternative approach, proposing a new definition for reliability, a new model for engineering as a failure mode factory, and outline alternative mistake prevention and robustness techniques.