Advantages and Challenges of Introducing AUTOSAR for Safety-Related Systems

The AUTOSAR standard is a de facto software standard for the automotive industry, being used for existing and future safety-related functions. The new International Standard, ISO 26262 1, dedicated for automotive functional-safety, which can be viewed as an adaptation of the IEC 61508 2 onto automotive applications, will be applied to the design and implementation of safety-related systems containing electrical, electronic and programmable electronic components, so called E/E/PE systems, i.e. also on AUTOSAR software. This combination opens up several advantages and challenges for the design of safety related systems with respect to platform software. One main reason is that AUTOSAR is designed without a specific application in mind. Thus AUTOSAR must be configurable to meet changing requirements from an application point of view as well as safety requirements. This paper addresses some of the issues that the authors believe will occur for software developers, ECU manufacturers and OEMs. It also address why we believe that the AUTOSAR concept provides a good opportunity to address safety.