The Inter-University Second Cycle Degree inAdvanced Automotive Electronic Engineering aims to form Electronic Engineerswith specific competencies pertaining to planning, creating, managing and usingthe information acquisition, transfer, storage and elaboration sub-systems thatcharacterise Vehicle Engineering.
Following a trend that has now pervadedmost fields, moving forward, both road and competition vehicles will beincreasingly defined by a series of functionalities based on the ability toacquire information about the physical reality surrounding them, store it andprocess it locally or send it to other vehicles, or to a remote supervisor, inorder to plan actions that will then be carried out by the vehicle itself.
This generic concept applies to a number ofsub-systems, from braking control to parking assistance, from on-boardentertainment to self-drive, from fault self-diagnosis to predictivemaintenance. Its actualization will be an integral and probably dominant part offuture vehicle design costs and will be based on the use of adequatelyprogrammed devices, apparatuses and electronic systems.
Therefore, despite developing transversalcompetencies shared by many Engineering branches, thus offering graduatesdifferent career opportunities in a wide range of industrial sectors, thedegree programme is designed to offer a specialization immediately spendablewithin vehicle manufacturing companies, including those specialised in sportcompetitions, a sector that enjoys a long and successful tradition in theregion.
To achieve this learning outcome, duringthe first year, this Second Cycle Degree programme provides students withessential knowledge on how to design and programme the so called “embedded” and“real-time” electronic systems conceived to work in close contact with physicalreality in order to process the signals received from the sensors, and anyinput from the driver, within the time necessary to guarantee functionality andsafety. At the same time, the programme offers content pertaining themathematical and algorithmic tools to process those signals and automatedcontrol methods that enable to put into practice the actions planned by thesystem.
Additionally, the programme focusses inparticular on the definition and design of the sensors most commonly used inthe sector – such as radars, lidars and imagers – on testing and reliabilityissues, from both a generic and an electromagnetic interference point of view,as well as on data transfer techniques within the vehicle and from the vehicleto external entities using a mobile network.
The programme's second year complements andspecialises the first, on one hand providing specific examples of realelectronic sub-system projects installed on existing vehicles and exposingstudents to embedded system programming methods that ensure the quality andsafety of the implemented procedures. On the other hand, focussing on ahigher-level of IT-algorithmic knowledge demonstrating how systems installed onvehicles can be made to interact to generate high-level behaviour such as, forexample, self-driving or interfacing with the driver thanks to augmentedreality.
The study plan leaves space to allowstudents to interact with the local companies more directly involved in the sectorduring the dissertation period.