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To improve everything from fuel economy to performance, automotive researchers are turning to “mechatronics,” the integration of familiar mechanical systems with new electronic components and intelligent-software control. Take brakes. In the next five to 10 years, electromechanical actuators will replace hydraulic cylinders; wires will replace brake fluid lines; and software will mediate between the driver’s foot and the action that slows the car. And because lives will depend on such mechatronic systems, Rolf Isermann, an engineer at Darmstadt University of Technology in Darmstadt, Germany, is using software that can identify and correct for flaws in real time to make sure the technology functions impeccably. “There is a German word for it: gründlich,” he says. “It means you do it really right.”
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