2004-21-0042 AUTomotive Open System ARchitecture - An Industry-Wide Initiative to Manage the Complexity of Emerging Automotive E/E-Architectures Harald Heinecke, BMW Group Klaus-Peter Schnelle, Bosch Helmut Fennel, Continental Jürgen Bortolazzi, DaimlerChrysler Lennart Lundh, Ford Motor Company Jean Leflour, PSA Peugeot Citroën Jean-Luc Maté, Siemens VDO Kenji Nishikawa, Toyota Motor Company Thomas Scharnhorst, Volkswagen AUTOSAR Partnership Copyright © 2004 Convergence Transportation Electronics Association ABSTRACT trend is likely to continue on an even reinforced level, pushed by increasingly demanding legal and customer The current automotive electric/ electronic (E/E) archi- requirements, which are often conflicting: tecture landscape is characterized by proprietary solu- tions, which seldom allow the exchange of applications • Legal enforcement – key items include environ- between both automotive OEMs and their suppliers. It is mental aspects and safety requirements apparent that on the basis of a continued exponential • Passenger convenience and service requirements growth in functional scope, further proliferation of pro- from the comfort and entertainment functional do- prietary solutions will consume more and more resources mains and may become difficult to control. • Driver assistance and dynamic drive aspects – key items include detection and suppression of critical AUTOSAR is a joint initiative of several major industry dynamic vehicle states and navigation in high-density players and aims to prepare for the increase in functional traffic surroundings scope. Unlike past attempts where the automotive industry re- This paper presents an overview over the development acted in response to major technological advances10, partnership as well as the technical concept and meth- now a technological breakthrough is required in order to odology. It concludes that introduction of an industry- keep pace with these requirements. wide standard of automotive E/E architecture is indeed vitally important and it is that, which will allow the industry Also, it has been recognized that this can hardly be han- players to concentrate on innovation rather than wasting dled by individual companies in isolation and rather con- effort when adapting existing components to different stitutes an industry-wide challenge. Conclusively, leading environments. OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers have jointly decided to estab- lish an open standard for automotive E/E architecture, The AUTOSAR standard will thus help to secure market leading to the AUTOSAR partnership, which was formally attractiveness and open new and different business op- launched in July 2003. portunities for OEMs and their suppliers alike. AUTOSAR serves as a basic infrastructure for the man- 1. INTRODUCTION agement of functions within both future applications and • Driven by the development of innovative vehicle applica- 10 Recent examples include the transition from point-to- tions, contemporary automotive E/E architecture has point serial communication to networked systems and already reached a high level of networking to date. This the introduction of deterministic technologies. standard software modules. The goals include the stan- Applied to these functional domains, primary objectives dardization of basic system functions and functional in- are: terfaces, the ability to integrate and transfer functions and to substantially improve software updates and up- • Consideration of availability and safety requirements grades over the vehicle lifetime. • Redundancy activation • Scalability to different vehicle and platform variants 2. MOTIVATION AND OBJECTIVES • Implementation and standardization of basic system functions as an OEM and supplier wide “Standard Motivations for standardization are: Core” solution (including e.g. bus technologies, op- erating systems, communication layer, HW abstrac- • Management of E/E complexity associated with tion layer, memory services, mode management, growth in functional scope middleware/interfaces, standard library functions) • Flexibility for product modification, upgrade and up- • Transferability of functions throughout network date • Integration of functional modules from multiple • Scalability of solutions within and across product suppliers lines • Maintainability throughout the whole “Product Life • Improved quality and reliability of E/E systems Cycle“ • Increased use of “Commercial off the shelf hard- Leading OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers, recognizing this to ware“ be an industry-wide challenge, decided to work together • Software updates and upgrades over vehicle lifetime to create a basis for industry collaboration on basic functions and interfaces while enabling a standardized Some principal classical challenges and the solutions platform on which an efficient competition on innovative suggested by AUTOSAR together with their implied functions is enabled (see Figure 1). benefits are listed in the table below. Figure 1: Exchangeability of functions between OEM and suppliers Challenges Solutions Benefits Non-competitive func- Standard- Reduction/avoidance of tions have to be ized interface proliferation within adapted to OEM spe- Interfaces and across OEMs and cific environments suppliers. Tiny little innovations Eased implementation of cannot be implemented HW-independent software at reasonable effort as functionality by using ge- provision of interfaces neric interface catalogues from other components requires a lot of effort Simplifies the model based development and makes it Missing clear interfaces possible of the use of stan- between basic software dardized AUTOSAR code and code generated generation tools from models Reusability of modules cross-OEM Exchangeability of compo- 2.1 AUTOSAR PARTNERSHIP AND STANDARD nents from different suppli- ers The development partnership AUTomotive Open System ARchitecture (AUTOSAR) has been formed in mid of Effort wasted on layout Basic Soft- Enhancement of software and optimization of ware Core quality 2003. This partnership aims to establish a standard that components which add will serve as a platform upon which future vehicle appli- no value recognized by Concentration on functions cations will be implemented and will also serve to mini- the customer with competitive value mize the current barriers between functional domains Obsolescence of hard- Microcon- Part of the hardware can be (vehicle centric versus passenger centric). Its scope ware (µC, circuits, ...) troller exchanged without need for encompasses: causes huge efforts in Abstraction adaptation of higher soft- adapting existing soft- ware/ functions/ applica- ware tions • Powertrain • Chassis Extended needs for • microcontroller per- Safety (active and passive) formance (caused by • Multimedia/Telematics new functions) cause • Body/Comfort need for upgrade, i.e. • Man Machine Interface re-design effort Large effort when relo- Runtime Encapsulation of functions • Common interfaces with development processes cating functions be- Environment creates independence of • tween ECUs communication technology Seamless, manageable, task optimized (time dependent) tool landscape Large effort when re- Communication easier using functions through standardized Specific benefits for new market entrant: mechanisms Partitioning and relocatabil- • Transparent and defined interfaces enable new busi- ity of functions possible ness models Immature processes Software Improvement in specifica- • Clear contractual task allocation and outsourcing of because of acting in Component tion (format and content) Software-Implementation accessible ad-hoc mode/ missing Template Opportunity for a seamless traceabilty of functional Main strategic targets to accomplish the project objec- requirements tool chain Exchange tives are modularity, configurability and transferability of Lack of compatible Formats software modules and the standardization of their inter- tooling (supplier, OEM) faces. OEM buys black-box Technical Eased process of integra- and is not able to ex- Integration tion of different software 3. TECHNICAL CONCEPT tend/integrate new of Software components allows optimi- functionality in an ECU zation of hardware costs of Multiple 3.0 OVERVIEW (e.g. integration of tire Suppliers guard functionality) To achieve the technical goals modularity, scalability, Lack of guidelines for Confor- Integration of 3rd party transferability and re-usability of functions AUTOSAR will use/ buy of software mance Test software components provide a common software infrastructure for automotive components Process Common understanding systems of all vehicle domains based on standardized between suppliers and interfaces. The AUTOSAR standard encompasses: Unclear legal situation License OEMs Agreement • Standardization of different APIs to separate the AUTOSAR software layers • More generally, the change from proprietary solutions to Encapsulation of functional software-components • a general standard will enable the following benefits: Definition of the data types of the software-compo- nents • • Increased reuse of software Identification of basic software modules of the soft- • Increased design flexibility ware infrastructure and standardize their interfaces • Clear design rules for integration AUTOSAR will enable optimization of the entire vehicle • Reduction of costs for software development and network as well as the configuration process (e.g. parti- service in the long term tioning and resource usage) and if required, allow for • OEM overlapping reuse of non-competitive software