The Autonomous, an umbrella organization including many European automotive industry players, has established a long-term collaboration, bringing together car manufacturers, technology, and research leaders to work towards a safe system architecture for self-driving vehicles.
The partners and leaders in their domain include Arm, Audi together with CARIAD – the automotive software company of VW group, BASELABS, CoreAVI, DENSO, Five, the German Fraunhofer IESE, NXP, the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology and TTTech Auto. The members of this first Working Group are committed to working towards a safe system architecture for self-driving vehicles. The goal of this collaboration is to lay the basis for safety standardization and pave the way for mass autonomous vehicle production.
“This cross-industry collaboration marks the starting point for a change of mindset in the industry and for further partnerships that will help overcome major hurdles of the prevailing competition,” said Ricky Hudi, Chairman of The Autonomous. “The development of truly automated driving will be better mastered by joint forces of car manufacturers, Tier 1 suppliers, tech and research companies. Therefore, a pre-competitive environment is necessary to develop safe technology beyond borders. By this, we create the basis for sustainable customer trust including best practices and cross-industry standards.”
According to PWC, car manufacturers’ R&D costs have increased significantly due to the rise of electric, connected and autonomous vehicle development. In the USA and Asia, R&D spending rose by one-third (to €13 bn and €28 bn respectively), while in Europe it increased by 75 percent to €42 bn during the last decade. However, increasing costs are not the only challenge for companies within the automated driving sector.
Product liability, emerging technological best practices and increasing technical complexity all demand know-how in various fields to solve remaining safety problems. To overcome these challenges, The Autonomous proposes a collaborative approach, bringing all relevant industry players together to jointly develop recommendations, specifications and best practices.
Following its kick-off in 2019 and multiple Chapter Events in 2020 with more than 1,500 participants, The Autonomous has established a new level of long-term collaboration with the first Working Group entitled “Safety & Architecture.” The upcoming safe system architecture for self-driving vehicles will include subsystems that connect to sensors and actuators as well as fault-containment units to ensure the safe automated operation of the overall vehicle. The resulting vehicle architecture will represent a reference solution for all participating members as a first step and subsequently may become of use for other companies and regions.
The Working Group’s consolidated output will be published in the form of technical reports. The reports will support knowledge transfer and give concrete guidance to the automotive industry for the series production of safe autonomous vehicles. Liaison and alignment with standard bodies will ensure that the Working Group outcome complements safety-related industry standards.
Contributors can initiate further Working Groups on The Autonomous platform in order to tackle key safety challenges of safe automated driving. The Autonomous community consists of participants from industry, government and academia as well as disruptors. A public announcement will follow at The Autonomous Main Event on September 29, 2021, the flagship event of the initiative.
