AUTOSAR (AUTomotive Open System ARchitecture) is a worldwide development partnership of automotive interested parties founded in 2003. It pursues the objective of creating and establishing an open and standardized software architecture for automotive electronic control units (ECUs) excluding infotainment. Goals include the scalability to different vehicle and platform variants, transferability of software, the consideration of availability and safety requirements, a collaboration between various partners, sustainable utilization of natural resources, maintainability throughout the whole "Product Life Cycle".
Contents
History
In order to develop and establish an open industry standard for automotive E/E architecture, the AUTOSAR development partnership was formed in July 2003 by BMW, Bosch, Continental, DaimlerChrysler, Siemens VDO and Volkswagen. In November 2003, Ford Motor Company joined as a Core Partner. Peugeot Citroën Automobiles S.A. and Toyota Motor Corporation joined the partnership in December 2003. General Motors became Core Partner in November 2004. After Siemens VDO was acquired by Continental in February 2008, it is no longer a self-contained Core Partner of AUTOSAR.
Since 2003, AUTOSAR has provided four major releases of the standardized automotive software architecture and one release of Acceptance Tests. The work of AUTOSAR can be divided into three phases:
In 2013, the AUTOSAR consortium entered a continuous working mode to maintain the standard and provide selected improvements (including the release R4.2 as well as Release 1.0 of Acceptance Tests).
Concept and goals
AUTOSAR provides a set of specifications that describes basic software modules, defines application interfaces and builds a common development methodology based on standardized exchange format. Basic software modules made available by the AUTOSAR layered software architecture can be used in vehicles of different manufacturers and electronic components of different suppliers, thereby reducing expenditures for research and development and mastering the growing complexity of automotive electronic and software architectures. Based on this guiding principle, AUTOSAR has been devised to pave the way for innovative electronic systems that further improve performance, safety and environmental friendliness and to facilitate the exchange and update of software and hardware over the service life of the vehicle. It aims to be prepared for the upcoming technologies and to improve cost-efficiency without making any compromise with respect to quality.
Software architecture
AUTOSAR uses a three-layered architecture:
The AUTOSAR Methodology
Acceptance Tests
In 2014 AUTOSAR Acceptance Tests were introduced to minimize the test effort and test costs. Acceptance Test Specifications are system tests specifications with interfaces to the application and the bus. The specification of standard acceptance tests contribute to these objectives.
Standardized Application Interfaces
Standardization of functional interfaces across manufacturers and suppliers and standardization of the interfaces between the different software layers is seen as a basis for achieving the technical goals of AUTOSAR.
Organization
Membership of AUTOSAR is separated in four different types. The contribution of partners varies depending on the type of partnership:
Core Partners include the founding partners BMW, Bosch, Continental, Daimler AG, Ford, General Motors, PSA Peugeot Citroën, Toyota and Volkswagen. These companies are responsible for organization, administration and control of the AUTOSAR development partnership. Within this core, the Executive Board defines the overall strategy and roadmap. The Steering Committee manages day-to-day non-technical operations and admission of partners, public relations and contractual issues. A spokesperson, appointed for nine month and supported by a Deputy Spokesperson, communicates with the outside world.
Premium and Development members contribute to work packages coordinated and monitored by the Project Leader Team established by the Core Partners.
As of January 2015, more than 180 companies participate in the AUTOSAR development partnership.