Michael Meisinger – författare

Software development for the automotive domain is currently subject to a silent revolution. On the one hand, software has become the enabling technology for almost all safety-critical and comfort functions o?ered to the customer. A total of 90 % of all innovations in automotive systems are directly or indirectly - abled by software. Today’s luxury cars contain up to 80 electronic control units (ECUs) and 5 di?erent, inter-connectednetworkplatforms, overwhich some700 software-enabled functions are distributed. On the other hand, the complexity induced by this largenumber of functions, their interactions, and their supporting infrastructure has started to becomethe limiting factor for automotive software development. Adequate management of this complexity is particularly important; the following list highlights three of the corresponding challenges: First, the dependencies between safety-critical and comfort functions are rapidly increasing;a simple example is the interplay of airbag controland power seat control in the case of an accident. Careful analysis and design of these dependencies are necessary to yield correct software solutions. Second, advances in wired and wireless networking infrastructures enable - terconnection between cars and backend service providers (e.g., to call for help in cases of emergency), between cars and devices brought into the car by drivers and passengers (such as cell phones, PDAs, and laptops), and even among cars. This dramatically shifts the focus from the development of individual software solutionsresidingondedicatedECUstotheirdistributionandinteractionwithin and beyond car boundaries.

Software development for the automotive domain is currently subject to a silent revolution. On the one hand, software has become the enabling technology for almost all safety-critical and comfort functions o?ered to the customer. A total of 90 % of all innovations in automotive systems are directly or indirectly - abled by software. Today’s luxury cars contain up to 80 electronic control units (ECUs) and 5 di?erent, inter-connectednetworkplatforms, overwhich some700 software-enabled functions are distributed. On the other hand, the complexity induced by this largenumber of functions, their interactions, and their supporting infrastructure has started to becomethe limiting factor for automotive software development. Adequate management of this complexity is particularly important; the following list highlights three of the corresponding challenges: First, the dependencies between safety-critical and comfort functions are rapidly increasing;a simple example is the interplay of airbag controland power seat control in the case of an accident. Careful analysis and design of these dependencies are necessary to yield correct software solutions. Second, advances in wired and wireless networking infrastructures enable - terconnection between cars and backend service providers (e.g., to call for help in cases of emergency), between cars and devices brought into the car by drivers and passengers (such as cell phones, PDAs, and laptops), and even among cars. This dramatically shifts the focus from the development of individual software solutionsresidingondedicatedECUstotheirdistributionandinteractionwithin and beyond car boundaries.

Software development for the automotive domain has become the enabling te- nologyforalmostallsafety-criticalandcomfortfunctionso?eredtothecustomer. Ninety percentofallinnovations inautomotive systems aredirectly or indirectly enabled by embedded software. The numbers of serious accidents have declined in recent years, despite constantly increasing tra?c; this is correlated with the introduction of advanced, software-enabled functionality for driver assistance, such as electronic stability control. Software contributes signi?cantly to the - tomotive value chain. By 2010 it is estimated that software will make up 40% of the value creation of automotive electrics/electronics. However, with the large number of software-enabled functions, their int- actions, and the corresponding networking and operating infrastructure, come signi?cant complexities both during the automotive systems engineering p- cess and at runtime. A central challenge for automotive systems development is the scattering of functionality across multiple subsystems, such as electronic control units (ECUs) and the associated networks. As an example, consider the central locking systems (CLS), whose functionality is spread out over up to 19 di?erent ECUs in some luxury cars. Of course, this includes advanced functi- ality, such as seat positioning and radio tuning according to driver presets upon entry, as well as unlocking in case of a detected impact or accident. However, thisexampledemonstratesthatmodernautomotivesystemsbridgecomfort-and safety-critical functionality. This induces particular demands on safety and - curity, and, in general, software and systems quality. The resulting challenges and opportunities were discussed, in depth, at the second Automotive Software Workshop San Diego (ASWSD)2006, on whose results we report here.