Virtual Testing and Validation of the Upgradable, Autonomous Car of the Future

Thomas Dietz
Head of Automotive Division,
Group Leader Research Campus ARENA 2036
Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation IPA

 

Autonomous driving and the resulting new business models will have a profound impact on the life-cycle of future cars. The higher degree of vehicle usage through shared mobility, significantly increased life-cycle mileage of the vehicle and complex, rapidly evolving hardware and software will create tremendous pressure to allow for updates and upgrades of core components during the life-cycle of the vehicle. Rapid evolution of technology and complex systems will lead to an explosion of the number of variants in the E/E architecture and software of the car that needs to be managed and evolved over the entire life-cycle. These challenges can only be addressed if functionality of subsystem is highly encapsulated. This requires self-description mechanisms of software and hardware components and integration flows for the deployment of software in the vehicle. This vehicle concept borrows from technology and approaches of cyberphysical system and is therefore called a cyberphysical car.


The key for realizing the cyberphysical car and unlock its potential with respect to updateability and upgradability is the integration flow for new components and software. This requires an IT-Platform that is capable of automatically analyzing a specific vehicle configuration, reasoning on its integrity, performing virtual tests and virtually validating safety and security of the vehicle configuration. As a result of this virtual testing test protocols that need to be performed after the upgrade need to be automatically created in order to validate the integrity of the physical car.


The presentation gives and overview of challenges for realizing new business models utilizing autonomous driving. The concept of the cyberphysical car is introduced as one possible solution of overcoming current limitations. The technologies and processes for realizing an integration flow involving virtual and automated testing and Validation of the updateable and upgradeable car of the future are outlined.