Develop, simulate, and deploy control algorithms in a modern visual and collaborative environment.
Work seamlessly with your team using built-in version control, automatic testing, and cloud-based development—all designed specifically for control engineering.
As automotive development moves toward software-defined vehicles, engineering teams need tools that match this evolution. See how Pictorus and Simulink compare across critical capabilities for modern vehicle control software development.
Modern vehicles demand seamless integration between control systems and custom code. Pictorus is a model-based development environment designed to seamlessly integrate custom code with core control systems and algorithms. By leveraging the Rust programming language, Pictorus enables automotive software teams to implement complex vehicle dynamics, controller logic, and other critical functionality in a safe, expressive and high-performance manner.
Pictorus modernizes software development with a model-based workflow, enabling real-time collaborative diagram editing in the browser. This cloud-based solution eliminates heavy software installations and ensures all users access the latest work. By linking models to GitHub repositories, Pictorus automatically generates pull requests that integrate into CI/CD pipelines, which test each pull request before merging.
Rust is a programming language focused on reliability and safety, integrating best practices from embedded software development. It offers memory safety, a strong type system, and strong ecosystem support, enabling a powerful toolchain that meets ISO 26262 certification standards. The Rust compiler enforces robust code creation and user-friendly features that simplify correctness. Its popularity is growing in the automotive industry among OEMs, suppliers, and software companies.
Regardless of the powertrain, vehicles must be efficient and reliable. To maximize the performance of engines, batteries, and inverters, it is essential to optimize control systems and algorithms. Pictorus combines tools for detailed hardware optimization into a single package. Develop and validate plant models, connect them to control models, and use APIs to conduct tests more quickly than traditional toolchains allow. Deploy controls to hardware and immediately see live data right in the block diagram.
The automobile has evolved from a hardware-defined machine to one with a complex software-defined layer, incorporating features similar to consumer electronics. Modern driver assistance and autonomous systems require advanced algorithms and significant computing power, while IoT connectivity links hardware components to a broader cloud infrastructure. Touchscreen interfaces call for smartphone-level technology integration. To merge these advanced features with low-level hardware control, model-based control algorithms are crucial. Pictorus is designed to connect optimized hardware control with agile software development seamlessly.
As vehicles become more connected, cybersecurity is essential beyond just traditional alarm systems. With the upcoming ISO/SAE cybersecurity standard, both consumers and regulators are focused on security. Pictorus addresses vulnerabilities using Rust, a memory-safe programming language favored by the Department of Defense for security reasons. By employing continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) practices and automated testing, vulnerabilities can be identified and fixed before deployment. This, along with fast developer workflows and over-the-air updates, enables quicker testing and deployment of security patches compared to traditional methods.
Despite the auto industry's hardware engineering prowess, its software development processes and tools have stagnated for decades. Many core tools like Simulink originate in the 1990s. Existing model-based design workflows generate hard-to-maintain C code that runs on difficult-to-debug embedded processors.
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