New Eagle development tool lets OEMs take control

During his early days working as a mechatronics engineer at General Motors, New Eagle Founder Rich Swortzel saw a fundamental need for greater agility and rapid iteration cycles when transitioning from a simulation to a working model during development of new technologies for vehicles and equipment.

Kevin Alley, chief commercial officer, New Eagle

“He felt there was a need for what we would call eMBD – embedded model-based development,” said Kevin Alley, chief commercial officer, New Eagle. “It is taking that model-based development paradigm, rapid iteration cycles working in sort of theory and simulation and then having a context tied to the embedded world to physically get it onto a real target.”

Swortzel eventually chose to found his own company in 2009 with the aim of producing embedded systems that speed development by integrating custom software and off-the-shelf hardware. The result was Raptor, an open, end-to-end software platform that enables users to fast-track production through virtual engineering and streamlined workflows.

Quick custom software creation

The core of the New Eagle platform is the Raptor tool – a proprietary development tool that serves as a plugin to MATLAB Simulink. Raptor uses eMBD to leverage proven design elements and code generation, reduce hardware verification efforts and maintain a consistent application development interface across ECU hardware, facilitating rapid development, easy testing and quick calibration.

The tool enables users to leverage native blocks and features alongside Raptor blocks to quickly create custom software for compatible controllers and displays.

“You’re able to drag and drop blocks – working in a domain that controls, system and mechanical engineers are very fluent in – but then not have to worry about translating that to a computer scientist or a computer engineer to recode or implement it for you,” Alley said. “Just hit the ‘build’ button, get out a file immediately, flash it onto the piece of electronics, take out to the test track and then live tune and calibrate – all within a single tool chain. It vastly accelerates that development cycle.”

Raptor is an open, end-to-end software platform that enables users to fast-track production through virtual engineering and streamlined workflows. (Source: New Eagle)

According to New Eagle, customers in the on-highway and off-highway vehicle, construction and mining, rail, marine, material handling, military and other industries have used its platform to speed development of applications such as electric and hybrid systems, alternative fuel engine control, hydraulics, autonomous systems and overall vehicle control.

Multi-piece business approach

There are essentially four pieces to the New Eagle business model, Alley said. The first consists of licensing of the Raptor software tool chain to developers. The second piece is the electronics themselves.

New Eagle customers have three options when it comes to ECUs. Option 1 is to use a commercial off-the-shelf model that has been made compatible with the Raptor tool chain. Option 2 is what Alley dubs as “bring your own ECU.”

“Customers come to us and say, ‘We love the tool chain, but we have our own electronics.’”

Custom-designed Raptor Control Modules, sporting a red housing and the New Eagle logo, are fully designed and manufactured in-house. (Photo: Becky Schultz)

The third option is to custom design the ECU for customers based on their specific needs and with enhanced optionality. These models – which are denoted as Raptor Control Modules (RCMs) and typically come in a red housing with the New Eagle logo – are fully designed and manufactured in-house by New Eagle.

The third piece of the business model is consulting engineering. This can consist of some form of funded software or hardware development, or applications engineering to provide support to help accelerate development.

New Eagle also offers turnkey design services through its Vehicle Integration Center (VIC). “Our team is very adept at being able to do complete hands-on work with customers’ vehicle designs and a fast developmental cycle,” Alley asserted.

“The fourth and final piece of the business model is where we act as a value-added reseller and distributor for third-party components… to bring them into smaller volume applications,” said Alley. These can include high-voltage motors, inverters and other components that can be more difficult to source for such applications.

Enablement partners

As part of its strategy, New Eagle has aligned itself with a number of strong manufacturing partners, one of which is John Deere Electronics. “We are enablement partners,” Alley stated. “We’re leveraging our strengths.”

New Eagle has aligned itself with manufacturing partners such as John Deere Electronics. Shown are John Deere’s M Series Raptor Control Modules. (Photo: Becky Schultz)

The partnership began when John Deere first sought to make its PDU series high-voltage inverters commercially available. “To do that, they wanted [a partner] that was agile and quick that could also help with the technology enablement,” Alley said. “That’s where our relationship started – as a value-added reseller and integrator for their PDU series. We’ve done that for, I think, 10 years.”

Then, at ACT Expo 2024, the companies announced the expansion of their relationship with integration of the Raptor software into John Deere M Series controllers. “We’ve put Raptor on five of their body chassis controller-style ECUs,” said Alley. “The rationale was somewhat similar to the PDU side but expanded beyond that.

“They obviously have an extremely robust supply chain, extremely good design and manufacturing capabilities, but they needed a partner that could enable an open platform that was fast and easy to use – hence the Raptor integration – as well as nimble to supply to these smaller niche markets as they grow.”

A further expansion was announced at this year’s ACT Expo, with New Eagle launching the Raptor High-Performance Compute Platform, a rugged, GPU-enabled embedded controller built on John Deere Electronics’ latest generation Vision Processing Unit (VPU), which was recently made commercially available to OEMs for on- and off-highway applications.

John Deere Electronics: Technology moves beyond ag applications VPU technology used for John Deere’s See & Spray is now available for OEM integration across industries

New Eagle is actively integrating the John Deere-developed hardware into the Raptor ecosystem, with support for model-based development workflows. The system becomes the first GPU-enabled controller in the Raptor lineup.

More power in a rugged platform

Built on a next-generation, GPU-enabled compute module, the Raptor High-Performance Compute Platform delivers up to 275 TOPS (Tera Operations Per Second) of processing power and supports up to 12 GMSL2 camera inputs with Power-over-Coax (PoC) technology. This makes it suited for advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS), mobile robotics, rapid prototyping and rugged industrial automation environments.

“The VPU has a NVIDIA Orin chip in it, so it has 275 teraOPS of computational power. We’re talking about multiple orders of magnitude more [than other ECUs],” Alley said. This enables it to capture and analyze millions of pixels of data from multiple cameras. “So, substantially more compute power, substantially more storage, and it’s meant to do things that are more within the ADAS and even the autonomy space.”

In addition, the hardware is ruggedized for real-world conditions, with IP67 sealing, fanless passive cooling and wide voltage and temperature support.

“Most of the electronics that you’ll see in the market are really like industrial PCs… They’re not going to take high vibration or temperatures, they’re usually not IP rated and they have a fan and active cooling,” Alley explained. “Whereas the VPU, its key characteristic is the fact that it is designed for extreme, rugged environments.”

The hardware also carries a robust supply chain behind it, he added.

Further enabling autonomy

On the software enablement side, New Eagle is bringing three options to the market with the High-Performance Compute Platform.

New Eagle demonstrated the Raptor High-Performance Compute Platform built on the John Deere VPU during ACT Expo. (Photo: Becky Schultz)

“Option one is we’re going to bring that as basically a standard open Jetson platform, solving some of the low-level software needs that make it an easy turnkey [solution],” said Alley. “For people that are already in the NVIDIA Jetson architecture and tool chain, it will be just like a rugged piece of hardware that already works with the existing workflows that they have.”

Option two is geared toward industrial automation on factory floors. “It’s the same base, but we’re enabling code assists, which is one of the tool chain developments used some in off highway and then pretty substantially in the industrial automation space,” Alley noted.

The third option, he continued, is “the most aligned with our traditional Raptor enablement, MATLAB Simulink plus our tool chain, for end-to-end development within that environment.” It enables both the control algorithms to be run on the unit as well as sensor processing for object detection and other required feature sets.

“In the Raptor case, it’s being able to tie the controls development that you’re doing in other ECUs that will be interacting with that to have it in a seamless developmental environment – having that same speed, fast iteration cycles, but within the autonomy domain.”

A layered approach

Alley went on to describe autonomy as a four-layer stack, with the top layer the perception system, consisting of cameras, radar, LiDAR and high levels of compute capability. “Its sole design is to understand the world, to be able to register who you are, where you are and what’s around you, and then be able to make smart decisions in that context,” he said.

Second comes the path planning or decision-making layer. “It’s handling the interactions based on its expectation of where it needs to go and what everything else is doing as being told by the perception system,” Alley indicated. “Similarly, it requires high levels of compute [capability].

“All that can be run on the VPU or the High-Performance Compute Platform – both the perception and decision-making algorithms.”

The third layer focuses on actuation – the by-wire system to control functions such as the throttle, steering, braking, shifting, etc. And the final layer consists of the physical vehicle itself.

“We started mostly in the retrofit space. A lot of the companies needed a platform to put vehicles either on road or off road, depending on the customer, to be able to drive autonomously. They needed to enable the chassis and that’s where we designed retrofit systems,” Alley explained. “Over time, as the industry has evolved, we’ve worked to move upstream with the OEMs to help build that natively into the vehicle.”

Now, the company has an opportunity to explore even more layers of the autonomy stack. “We have historically played in the bottom two layers extremely well,” said Alley. “The [High-Performance Compute Platform] allows us to be participatory and further aid customers in those top two layers, at least in the hardware and tool chain development.”

‘Take Control’

Going forward, New Eagle plans to deliver its rugged compute platform with enablement tool chain into the hands of customers seeking to move into autonomy. Such customers could span the realm of markets the company covers, including passenger cars, commercial vehicles, off highway (forestry, construction, ag, mining, etc,), military, marine and aerospace.

John Deere Electronics chose to integrate Raptor into its controllers because it’s an open platform that is fast and easy to use. (Photo: Becky Schultz)

“The rationale is because of the... three major technology waves that we ride on. First is electrification or hybridization or alt fuels,” he noted. “It’s all about how you leverage those newer technologies, whether it’s pure BEV or hybrid, or maybe it’s hydrogen or maybe fuel cells... As you go from industry to industry, the underlying technology and the need to apply that technology is quite the same.”

The second wave is autonomy. “Again, where we’ve largely played there is through that drive-by-wire vehicle enablement to make them controllable, safe vehicles,” Alley said. “We’ve done everything from a two-person custom EV all the way up to 250-, 300-ton mining trucks, and everywhere in between.”

The third technology area is “Industry 4.0”, or the next step from industrial automation to industrial autonomy. “When you think about industrial automation now, you have vehicles [and] robots on the floor that are moving autonomously with people and all of that has to be orchestrated,” said Alley.

“Those are the three technology domains we play in, but you can see how they might be similar... an electric vehicle is an electric vehicle is an electric vehicle. At the end of the day, they all have some sort of power source. They all have to control some sort of motor and inverter, battery system, cooling system, etc.,” he commented. “So, it helps us go across these different market segments.”

Where New Eagle differentiates itself is “our goal is not to sell black boxes.”

“If you work with the traditional large automotive Tier 1 or off-highway Tier 1, they want to sell you a black box widget that the OEM can’t touch. If you want something changed, money and time,” Alley asserted. “We are looking to enable, and that’s really where our tagline ‘Take Control’ comes from... That’s the whole point – take control of development, take control of the IP, take control of the timeline. We want to be an enabler not a doer.”