In 1998, McLaren Electronics revolutionised the way that control systems were developed for a racing car. This approach minimises the time to take a new concept and run it on the car.

When in-season testing was allowed in Formula One, teams were using McLaren Electronics’ development environment to develop a new control strategy in the UK, and run it on the car at a test, a few hours later in Spain.

The development process can be broken down into three steps:

Firstly, the control system is defined graphically in Simulink; then the system is built into a run-able application using the GDE (graphical development environment); finally, the run-able application is downloaded to the ECU using System Monitor.

This highly efficient development environment is now being exploited by companies wishing to streamline their control system engineering process, and minimise time to market. The Simulink models that are developed for R&D and prototype vehicles can be re-deployed easily to production ready ECUs, providing a seamless migration path throughout the development process.