Study on architecture of ECU for automobile

Electronic Control Units (ECU) have been widely used in modern automobiles. Since ECU was developed to pass the severe emission control at first, many functions of automobile have been realized by ECU. Recently, new type of automobile, i.e. Hybrid or Fuel Cell which requires new ECU technology, has lately attracted considerable attention. In this paper, the history of automobile control is described from the viewpoint of automobile control architecture. It is clarified from the investigation of the history that two types of architecture innovations exist. One is the radical innovation, and another is the incremental innovation.