The technological advancements of recent years have steadily increased the complexity of vehicle-internal software systems, and the ongoing development towards autonomous driving will further aggravate this situation. This is leading to a level of complexity that is pushing the limits of existing vehicle software architectures and system designs. By changing the software structure to a service-based architecture, companies in other domains successfully managed the rising complexity and created a more agile and future-oriented development process. This paper presents a case-study investigating the feasibility and possible effects of changing the software architecture for a complex driver assistance function to a microservice architecture. The complete procedure is described, starting with the description of the software-environment and the corresponding requirements, followed by the implementation, and the final testing. In addition, this paper provides a high-level evaluation of the microservice architecture for the automotive use-case. The results show that microservice architectures can reduce complexity and time-consuming process steps and makes the automotive software systems prepared for upcoming challenges as long as the principles of microservice architectures are carefully followed.
Another publish-subscribe middleware called Chromosome and a centralized platform architecture for automotive applications, called Race, have similarities with the above approach and with this work @cite_9 . It is a central computing architecture, which is supporting on the software and network level.
@cite_9
2084899319
In the last couple of years software functionality of modern cars increased dramatically. This growing functionality leads directly to a higher complexity of development and configuration. Current studies show that the amount of software will continue to grow. Additionally, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous functionality, such as highly and fully automated driving or parking, will be introduced. Many of these new functions require access to different communication domains within the car, which increases system complexity. AUTOSAR, the software architecture established as a standard in the automotive domain, provides no methodologies to reduce this kind of complexity and to master new challenges. One solution for these evolving systems is developed in the RACE project. Here, a centralized platform computer (CPC) is introduced, which is inspired by the well-established approach used in other domains like avionics and automation. The CPC establishes a generic safety-critical execution environment for applications, providing interfaces for test and verification as well as a reliable communication infrastructure to smart sensors and actuators. A centralized platform also significantly reduces the complexity of integration and verification of new applications, and enables the support for Plug&Play.