Center Of Excellence For Connected And Autonomous Cars Founded

The engineering service provider FEV is pushing ahead with its “Smart Vehicle” development: For this purpose, FEV has founded a global Center of Excellence (CoE). The center focuses on the interdisciplinary development topics of networking and automation of future vehicle developments. In addition to driver assistance systems and the automation of driving functions, this includes infotainment and telematics systems, networking with the environment (Car-2X) and the cloud (Car2Cloud communication), and cyber security.

Increasing networking needs new functions and developments

From a development perspective, the increasing networking of vehicles means that countless new functions, providers and development tasks are emerging. On behalf of the customer, FEV develops hardware components and control software for networked vehicles and tests and validates the features and functions of various domain controllers. Technologies from different suppliers and from different industries are integrated into end-to-end systems and validated in the ecosystem for connected vehicles.

"In order to master all the resulting interactions around the vehicle, it is essential to consider the overall system at every development step," explains Stephan Tarnutzer, head of the CoE. "With our networked systems thinking, we are able to carry out extensive design, integration and validation tasks in a short time." Automated development and test tools would play an essential role.

More complex developments need corresponding teams of experts

Stephan Tarnutzer, Vice President Electronics at FEV North America, has taken over the management of the CoE. In future, he will be responsible for FEV's global smart vehicle development activities and wants to network the technical experts from all locations and departments.

"With new functions, interfaces and components, development tasks for OEMs and service providers are becoming more and more complex, which necessitates appropriate teams of experts, benchmarking databases and powerful tools," explains Professor Stefan Pischinger, President and CEO of the FEV Group. "With our" Smart Vehicle "strategy and the Center of Excellence, we have an interdisciplinary approach with which we want to achieve short development times and optimal results."

Use the advantages of simulation for test purposes

In everyday customer projects, FEV uses the advantages of simulation and modeling for development and testing purposes. For example, FEV developed the Telematics System Tester (TST). With the TST, the telematics system to be tested is to be loaded and evaluated in a secure environment with hundreds of different scenarios in a short time.

With the integration of more cloud-based content in modern vehicles, cybersecurity is becoming increasingly important. The more interfaces a vehicle gets, the more vulnerable it becomes. FEV offers its customers analyzes of risks, threats and vulnerabilities as well as specific cybersecurity gateways. The gateway is connected to the vehicle's communication bus and is intended to detect and prevent harmful attacks. It can also be used as a firewall between the external interfaces and the vehicle bus to prevent cyber attacks. (kj)