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iVTInternational.com June 2020 41
environment of off-highway vehicles, customers
expect the same UX and interoperability as their
electronic commodities. These trends have a
profound impact on the required skills of the
engineers, and on the product offering. For
example, software development has transitioned
from straightforward and linear PLC programming
handled by one engineer to object-oriented
design (OOD), Qt, or web technology development
done in diverse and geographically dispersed
teams. On the product side, the HMI Team at
TTControl has developed and recently launched
its new rugged operator interface Vision 3
which supports OOD, relational databases, Qt and
much more.
Resources, tools and costs
Software development needs complex
infrastructure for versioning, bug tracking,
compiling, debugging and testing, for example.
For an OEM of mobile machinery, this can be
very challenging as its core competencies might
not lie in software engineering itself. OEMs
could be confronted with recruiting or training
for adequate software developers. Besides
qualified personnel resources, processes and
tools also become essential to support software
technicians along the entire development cycle,
from the requirements capture to the automated
software tests. The initial investment, continuous
maintenance and alignment within the internal
processes should be thoughtfully planned and
covered by an adequate environment framework.
Electronic suppliers in dedicated application
development centres can support OEMs
accelerating vehicle development and increase
efficiency, resulting in a beneficiary contribution
to entrepreneurial success.
Efficiency, modularity and scalability
Software modularity and scalability is essential for
improving mobile machinery and its ROI over the
entire product life cycle. OEMs will be able to make
the most out of their products by focusing on
modular solutions and economies of scale. The reuse
of well tested and therefore reliable software
library blocks also allows a significant reduction of
risks. In order to comply with functional safety
and international quality standards, crossfunctional
teamwork and well-established
processes are needed to contribute to the OEMs
efficiency properly.
“TTControl is aware of the numerous
challenges OEMs are facing in the competitive
mobile machinery market and has established a
competence centre for future application software
development, accompanying its customers with
their projects and help to shift mobile machinery
to a new technological level,” says Roberto Ferrari,
vice president service and operations at TTControl.
Application Development Centre
With the dedicated Application Development
Centre (ADC) in the North Italian town of Brixen,
TTControl supports its customer along the
entire machine development life cycle: from the
definition of the requirements to the validation of
the application on the machine.
Its team of engineers is well-versed in functional
safety, machine automation, HMI applications, IoT
and computer vision. With more than 15 years in
several application fields including agriculture,
construction, municipal and material handling, the
software engineering experts at TTControl fully
comprehend their customers’ requirements for
mobile machinery design.
“With the ADC we strive to be a reliable and
flexible long-term partner for our customer’s
software developments,” says Janosch Fauster,
manager of customer projects at TTControl.
“We want to support the OEMs in continuously
evolving their machine’s features, work efficiency
and degree of automation with safe, state-of-theart
and maintainable software functions.”
Besides standard environments like C, C++,
CODESYS, Qt or Simulink, TTControl also has access
to the software solution Match for customers
relying on an integrated software approach for
mobile machinery. Match is developed by Hydac’s
Software Centre near Berlin. With this product
line, Hydac offers its customers a comprehensive
software suite for the development and
maintenance of electronic control systems
for off-highway vehicles.
One-stop solution
Due to its integration into the TTTech Group
and the joint venture partnership with the
systems, sensors and Hydac International,
TTControl draws from extensive industry
knowledge. During project phases, software
engineers of TTControl can also rely on experts at
TTTech Auto Iberia (Linux, Qt, computer vision,
security, former Silicon Gears), TTTech Auto CEE in
Bosnia and Herzegovina (embedded software and
testing, former RT-RK) and the specially founded
Covision Lab in Brixen, specialising in computer
vision research.
Focusing on their core business while relying
on professional innovation partners helps OEMs to
bundle their resources and to lead technological
development. iVT
Author: Michael Thomas Mastera, product marketing
manager, TTControl GmbH
RIGHT: Complex
programming: the number
of written lines of code for
a standard controller can
easily exceed 100,000
/pivt
/iVTInternational.com
