Brain boxes
‘We have definitely seen a much bigger uptake in customers opting to do their own custom strategies’
Engine Control Units, more commonly known as ECUs, are an integral part of any modern-day vehicle. Whether you drive a hatchback on the road or an open-wheel racecar on the track, the ECU controls vital parts of the vehicle to ensure that your inputs turn into actions.
Modern day ECUs are a far cry from the earliest forms of engine control system, developed by BMW for its 14-cylinder aviation engines in the ’40s. Gone are the open looped analogue controls of the ’70s and ’80s, too, and replacing them are completely digital ECUs making thousands of decisions per second.
‘The ECU is like our brains,’ says Rodi Basso, motorsport business director at McLaren Applied Technologies. ‘We have our senses, and the brain translates our five senses into actions by actuating the muscles for a reaction. This is exactly what an ECU does for the car’.
The number of sensors on modern racecars can range anywhere from 200 to 300, with the total amount of signals amounting to a whopping 2000, either from direct or derived measurements. ‘All these inputs come into the ECU for decisions to be made in real time,’ Basso says. ‘The responses are then carried out by actuators to improve the performance and guarantee the reliability of the car.’
Command and control
These actuators can fulfil traditional ECU purposes such as fuel, spark, or valve timing to control the engine; or create smoother and faster shifts in the gearbox. But the days when ECUs only served the function of adjusting fuel mixture, ignition timing, and boost pressure are far behind us and more chassis related controls are now being carried out by the ECU as
