Reductions of hardware costs as well as implementations of new innovative functions are the main drivers of today's automotive electronics. Indeed more and more resources are spent on adapting existing solutions to different environments. At the same time, due to the increasing number of networked components, a level of complexity has been reached which is difficult to handle using traditional development processes.
The automotive industry addresses this problem through a paradigm shift from a hardware-, component-driven to a requirement- and function-driven development process, and a stringent standardization of infrastructure elements. One central standardization initiative is the AUTomotive Open System ARchitecture (AUTOSAR). AUTOSAR was founded in 2003 by major OEMs and Tier1 suppliers and now includes a large number of automotive, electronics, semiconductor, hard- and software companies. AUTOSAR aims at facilitating the re-use of soft- and hardware components between different vehicle platforms, OEMs and suppliers. To achieve this, AUTOSAR defines a methodology that supports a distributed, function-driven development process and standardizes the software-architecture for each ECU in such a system. AUTOSAR also specifies compatible software-interfaces at application-level.
This paper gives an overview of the AUTOSAR initiative, its goals, partners and members, and roadmap. It describes the AUTOSAR concepts, highlights the achievements to-date and the challenges ahead.