Fault-tolerant Embedded Platforms

Embedded systems must function dependably even during outages

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Embedded systems cannot be allowed to simply shut down in safety-critical situations or when outages occur. Critical functions must continue to perform reliably. Dependable service-oriented architectures (SOA) for embedded systems enable the required flexibility. SOAs are capable of autonomous reconfiguration in real-time, even synchronized across multiple electronic control units. To do that, functions are decoupled from the runtime environment and shifted dynamically within their operating environment without sacrificing functional safety.

Future solutions must be able to execute increasingly complex and intelligent functions. To improve the economic viability of innovative technologies, there is furthermore a growing need to be able to revert to legacy components and systems such as ROS 2 (robot operating system, version 2) for use as autonomous operating systems. However, these solutions are not designed for safety-critical applications and as a result must be validated.

Fail-operational approaches for autonomous driving and Industry 4.0

E/E architectures for autonomous vehicles must be designed such that the systems are prevented from simply shutting down in case of an outage. With Industry 4.0 systems, even brief idle periods can lead to considerable revenue losses. With our cost-effective fail-operational approaches, we offer dependable architecture concepts so that your systems can successfully manage even critical situations.

By partnering with the Fraunhofer Institute for Cognitive Systems IKS, you will be in a position to carry out projects such as

  • automatically adding new technical safety requirements, such as »fail-operational behavior«,  to AUTOSAR system models, and directly specifying real-time requirements in the system
  • easily implementing safety standards such as ISO 26262 or SOTIF (ISO PAS 21448) and incorporating them at the start of the development phase
  • automatically adapting safety mechanisms and safety functions to accommodate technical modifications

Fraunhofer IKS develops fault-tolerant embedded systems

At the Fraunhofer Institute for Cognitive Systems IKS, we can assist you during architecture design, system development and architecture validation. To ensure functional safety, we offer:

  • adaptive mechanisms for the high availability of critical systems, from recovery, reconfiguration and degradation mechanisms, to heath monitoring
  • validation of unsafe operating environments such as ROS2 and Android, plus cloud services
  • dependable service-oriented architectures (SOA) for embedded systems

References

 

Resilient Platforms for Autonomous Cyber-Physical Systems

In this project, Hitachi and Fraunhofer IKS developed a resilient architecture for cloud-based control systems based on the example of an automated valet parking service in a parking garage.

 

Continental and Fraunhofer IKS make autonomous vehicles safer

Together with Continental, Fraunhofer IKS was able to create a concept for the dynamic distribution of vehicle functions and develop a technical safety concept that describes an implementation of the identified safety requirements.

Collaboration

In addition to contract development, we offer you various other opportunities for collaboration, such as

  • joint innovation teams
  • studies
  • potential analyses

Here you will find an overview of our collaboration possibilities:

 

Safe Adaptive Software for Fully Electric Vehicles

Within the EU-funded project SafeAdapt, a consortium of 9 partners from six European countries is making innovative changes to the E/E architecture, which will reduce the complexity of the system and raise the cost and energy efficiency.

 

Future Vehicle Software Architectures

Because the number of ECUs for integrating new functions cannot be increased at will, new concepts are required that will allow more flexible mapping of functions to the ECUs. Therefore, Fraunhofer IKS researchers (former Fraunhofer ESK) are actively working on self-adaptive E/E system concepts.