Fault-tolerant Embedded Platforms

Embedded systems cannot be allowed to simply shut down in safety-critical situations or when outages occur. Critical functions must continue to perform reliably. Dependable service-oriented architectures (SOA) for embedded systems enable the required flexibility. SOAs are capable of autonomous reconfiguration in real-time, even synchronized across multiple electronic control units. To do that, functions are decoupled from the runtime environment and shifted dynamically within their operating environment without sacrificing functional safety.

Future solutions must be able to execute increasingly complex and intelligent functions. To improve the economic viability of innovative technologies, there is furthermore a growing need to be able to revert to legacy components and systems such as ROS 2 (robot operating system, version 2) for use as autonomous operating systems. However, these solutions are not designed for safety-critical applications and as a result must be validated.

E/E architectures for autonomous vehicles must be designed such that the systems are prevented from simply shutting down in case of an outage. With Industry 4.0 systems, even brief idle periods can lead to considerable revenue losses. With our cost-effective fail-operational approaches, we offer dependable architecture concepts so that your systems can successfully manage even critical situations.

By partnering with the Fraunhofer Institute for Cognitive Systems IKS, you will be in a position to carry out projects such as

• automatically adding new technical safety requirements, such as »fail-operational behavior«,  to AUTOSAR system models, and directly specifying real-time requirements in the system
• easily implementing safety standards such as ISO 26262 or SOTIF (ISO PAS 21448) and incorporating them at the start of the development phase
• automatically adapting safety mechanisms and safety functions to accommodate technical modifications