Dependable Automotive Systems based on Model Certified Components

Advances in Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS), intelligent vehicles and cooperative systems are enabling traffic and transport solutions that are both safer and more environmentally acceptable. While it is well known that high dependability is a desirable feature it has a price, and the level of dependability needed varies from application to application. Typical examples are cooperative safety applications, in particular traffic situation aware vehicle driver warning and assisting systems, enabled by vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure wireless communication in combination with the use of geographical map information, Differential Global Positioning System (DGPS) and vehicle-carried sensors. This kind of applications depend on the reception of satellite data (combined with on-board sensor data from, e.g. odometer and accelerometer) for positioning of the own vehicle and on periodic broadcasting of this information to all neighbors in range. Both the wireless communication with satellites and the one between vehicles can have severe difficulties, for example due to hills or high buildings directly hindering both kinds of radio transmission. There are techniques to make the solutions more robust, e.g. by information fusion for temporary or local communication outage compensation. However, further development is needed and since coverage problems can be made known in advance and related to geographical areas, such information can also be explored