Companies in the IT and automotive industries have joined forces to establish the groundwork for safety standardisation and the mass manufacture of self-driving cars. The joint body that is called The Autonomous is a collaboration between ARM, Audi, Cariad, Baselabs, CoreAVI, Denso, Fraunhofer IESE, NXP, the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology, and TTTech Auto.
According to Ricky Hudi, Chairman of The Autonomous, the relationship represents the beginning of a fresh perspective in the sector and for increased partnerships. The collaboration is expected to help the sector overcome major obstacles in the current competition.
Hudi added that this cross-industry collaboration can be considered the beginning of a shift in the industry’s attitude, as well as future alliances that will aid in overcoming major challenges posed by the current competition. Joint efforts of automobile manufacturers, Tier 1 suppliers, IT and research firms will be better able to grasp the development of totally automated driving. As a result, to create safe technologies beyond national borders, a pre-competitive environment is required. According to Hudi this will lay the groundwork for long-term customer trust, including best practises and industry-wide standards.
The expenditures of research and development for electric, connected, and autonomous vehicles have climbed dramatically. Over the last 10 years, these expenditures in the United States and Asia have increased by a third while in Europe, it has increased by 75 percent. The Autonomous aims to bring down massive expanses in R&D through this collaborative approach.
More importantly, the organisation is focused with resolving security issues that continue to arise as technology becomes more complicated. In order to ensure the safe automated functioning of the complete vehicle, the intended system architecture for self-driving vehicles should comprise subsystems that connect to sensors and actuators, as well as units for fault isolation. The vehicle architecture should serve as a starting point for all participants and be made available to other firms and locations so that autonomous vehicles can be mass-produced.
