In the current world of automated vehicles (AVs), the primary goal is to achieve high safety, while often sacrificing usability. In particular in urban environments, human intervention is often required to maneuver the AV out of a situation. The reasons for the urban challenges are manifold and include high levels of occlusion and a high degree of uncertainty for the behavior of other traffic participants. To address these challenges, a consortium consisting of Intel Deutschland GmbH (Intel Germany), Schaeffler Technologies AG & Co. KG, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), FZI Forschungszentrum Informatik, ANavS GmbH, Ibeo Automotive Systems GmbH, und Lake Fusion Technologies GmbH (LFT) submitted the joined research proposal “SafeADArchitect”, which now received the funding approval from the German Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, and will be funded for the next 2.5 years.
The goal of the “SafeADArchitect” project is to develop new approaches and concepts to improve safety of automated vehicles in urban environments. For this purpose, new methods that enable realtime monitoring and mitigation of risks (e.g. collision risk, risk of control loss, etc.) will be in focus. In this regard, it is a primary goal of “SafeADArchitect” to develop a comprehensive architecture solution including necessary safety layers covering the complete system. This means that not only the main software components of the AV are included in this study, but also the compute hardware itself, the necessary sensors and even the driving platform will be considered. In addition, new ways to facility the certification process for functional safety standards such as the ISO-26262 will be investigated.
The results of “SafeADArchitect” will help to enable and facilitate the development of safety concepts for future AVs, and will be an excellent spotlight for Intel’s ambitions in this area.