Autonomous driving Cooperation as a key factor

Related Vendors

MicroSys Electronics GmbH

FAULHABER Drive Systems

Wuxi InfiMotion Technology Co., Ltd.

As part of a long-term partnership, MicroSys and EasyMile have already developed a safety-critical embedded system that is used in EasyMile's autonomous vehicle solutions. Now the collaboration has been taken to a new level: The aim is to develop new systems for future vehicles, a broader range of applications and a higher level of integrity.

*Ina Schindler is Managing Director at MicroSys Electronics

Autonomous driving is already a reality for EasyMile and not just a vision of the future. The company launched commercial vehicles with comprehensive approvals from independent experts in 2018. Since then, EasyMile vehicles have covered more than 1,000,000 km  (approx. 621,000 miles) according to SAE autonomy level 4 at over 400 locations—with a zero collision record. Similarly, EasyMile has tailored this technology to the freight and goods transportation market for airports, ports and industrial logistics centers and offers a range of other products developed in collaboration with various automotive suppliers. These include the EZTow (Fig. 1), an autonomous tractor unit. It is used in a number of automotive plants and logistics centers in Europe and the USA. It is also used at airports for hauling luggage.

Or the EZTug. This is a driverless terminal tug that is used for the autonomous transport of containers in ports in order to improve throughput, reduce congestion and minimize delays (Fig. 2).

The company is currently focusing on driverless solutions for industrial applications. In parallel, it is also developing its technology for passenger shuttles and sees this platform gaining wider acceptance in the next 3 to 5 years.

All of these new developments will be based on EasyMile's wealth of experience and solutions that have proven to be extremely successful worldwide (Fig. 3). EasyMile already serves various customers in numerous application areas. These include, for example, the transportation of materials in large industrial production facilities at the BMW plant in Dingolfing and Daimler Trucks, as well as in ports such as Vlissingen in the Netherlands and airports such as Changi in Singapore, DFW Airport in the USA, Toulouse in France and Narita in Japan. In passenger transportation, the main focus is on campus and smart city projects, including the largest networked fleets in Europe.

Challenges with safety-critical systems

The collaboration between EasyMile and MicroSys is closely linked to the development of EasyMile's new safety-critical embedded systems. This development plays an important role because the use and operation of autonomous vehicles is inevitably associated with risks for the environment, pedestrians and road users (Figure 4). A high level of integrity is therefore a prerequisite for serving the industrial logistics and public transport markets.

At the same time, the development of embedded systems - whether, safety-related or not - for autonomous vehicles is by its very nature also a kind of future-oriented activity: the state of the art in sensors, algorithms and computer technologies is developing faster than ever, which is typically not readily possible for safety. Finally, the development of a safety-critical system requires at least the partial freezing of some parts of a system, in particular the entire safety concept and the scope of the safety function. The development and certification are also still a matter of years, which means that the final system that will benefit from the safety-critical function does not even exist yet. It is therefore crucial to correctly anticipate the development of requirements for autonomous vehicles in order to manage tomorrow's functions with today's technology.

These features are primarily linked to the expansion of the Operational Design Domain (ODD) - in particular to take more complex use cases with a higher speed of up to 50 km/h (31 mph) into account. Such use cases always include more interactions with other users, such as other vehicles, pedestrians or even airplanes.

Design of a safety-critical control unit

The hardware that houses security-critical functions is at the heart of the security of the entire system. For a young company like EasyMile, investing in the right hardware is therefore an important decision. The development of a customized electronic control unit (ECU) was based on the following considerations:

• To be able to control the development of safety-critical software with a step-by-step approach by gradually increasing the integrity level of the entire software stack.

• To be able to adapt the power and performance of the system to the high performance level of the safety-relevant control unit.

• The ability to address various interfaces and protocols, enabling the control unit to be used in a wide range of vehicles with a uniform level of integrity.

EasyMile works with a network of suppliers for various components and software. For the development of the ECU, MicroSys Electronics was chosen as the supplier of the System-on-Module (SOM), which offers the possibility of scaling performance in the future by replacing the module. MicroSys supported EasyMile's certification requirements and integrated the SOM into an ECU according to the company's specifications. MicroSys also ensures series production of the ECU. MicroSys will now follow the same path in the development of the next generation ECU, where EasyMile will benefit from the advantages of the scalable System-on-Modules family that the company offers based on NXP's S32 Vehicle Network Processor technology.

The key to successful collaboration

The collaboration between EasyMile and MicroSys has always been efficient, and this success is largely due to the strong partnership between the two companies. MicroSys has proactively supported and guided EasyMile during the development of the ECU, while EasyMile with MicroSys support has made the development of safety-critical ECUs a core business. This has allowed both companies to gain a high level of understanding of each other's activities, adapt their respective processes to minimize effort and achieve the required level of quality, and manage the finished product in a collaborative manner. Finally, the support of MicroSys EasyMile also enabled safety audits to be conducted with independent auditors or customers.

EasyMile's investment in safety-critical ECUs now also enabled the company to master the embedded software stack and maintain a product based on a simple, minimal architecture. The approach was executed incrementally, with incremental investments to achieve each milestone. As a result, the safety-critical system was quickly put into practice and benefited from continuous improvements from then on.

Future prospects

Which solution will EasyMile use in the future? The expected requirements for future safety-critical functions will necessitate the use of more powerful microprocessors, which typically have eight to sixteen cores, more memory and faster interfaces. There is definitely room for improvement in terms of performance and energy efficiency that needs to be explored. MicroSys' portfolio can support this development (Fig. 5).

A solution based on NXP S32 processors with 8 Arm Cortex-A53 cores in combination with 4 Arm Cortex-M7 lockstep cores on an SoC is already possible today, for example. Future SoC developments are also very promising. NXP has announced even more performance for its S32 real-time processors and integration into future 5nm products to provide a strong roadmap with software compatibility. NXP has a working 5nm real-time processor test chip as a first step in this direction. Corresponding system-on-modules will surely follow in the course of time. (se)

This article was first published on our sister website www.next-mobility.de (German Language), Vogel Communications Group