7.1.1. The Vehicle: A System of Complex, Interdependent Parts

Optimizing the performances and respecting qualitative and quantitative rules of a complex system comprising a vehicle, its drivers and its passengers means acquiring and exploiting a large amount of dedicated data. These include the following:

• data having to do with passive security features, such as airbags, seatbelts with pretensioners, de-mistifiers, door closing indicators, levels, and quality of wheel-to-ground contact;

• data having to do with active security, including automatic driving and monitoring, anti-collision radar, ABS, and turning adjustment;

• passenger comfort data, such as temperature control, hygrometric degree and air quality;

• data relevant for control and transmission, including parametrization by cartography, electronic steering and steering wheel functions, servo-control of oil and water temperatures, and anti-pollution devices.

In this sense, these shared acquisition and analysis structures are superior to equivalent centralized systems in at least three ways:

• in terms of reliability, because of redundancy and reduction of connective wiring;

• response time;

• flexibility.

These shared structures are based on data capturing, carried out as closely as possible to their source, accompanied by a local conditioning and pre-analysis. The goal of these operations is to make a quick decision, most often of the reflexive kind. The exchanges with the central unit, made through a serial transmission bus, are then reserved for slowly changing data analysis (door closing indicator, trunk, hood, tire pressure, different alarms, to name a few features). Some of these features require fairly complex...