9 research outputs found

    Innovation Management System Assessment and Benchmarking

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    TIMS (Training in Innovation Management System for Sustainable SMEs) is an EU Erasmus+ project which analyzed the ISO (International Standardisation Organisation) 56000 innovation management system norm parts and configured in 2022 an ISO 56000-based innovation assessment portal. This system allows self-assessment, independent expert assessment, and benchmarking for innovation management. In 2023, a competence matrix and related training materials to support the implementation of ISO 56000 is developed. The ISO 56000-based assessment tool applied ISO 33020 for process capability assessment for ISO 56000 and this allows us to determine the capability of ISO 56000 processes. This paper gives an overview of which processes have been derived from ISO 56000 and how the PAM (Innovation Process Assessment Model) is structured. Since ISO 33020 provides a standard method to determine process attributes and capability level profiles of innovation management system processes, the method also allows a Europe (and worldwide) benchmarking of the capability of innovation management systems. The objective of TIMS is to establish an assessment system and training to roll out ISO 56000 to the European industry. The tools and training materials will be used by universities in lecturing programs and by innovation agents in the industry

    Safety design strategies in highly autonomous drive level 2 - Lateral control decomposition concept

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    The paper is based on an experimental study at VSB TUO Ostrava with a DEMOCAR vehicle that simulates a real car with sensor fusion concept and a vehicle gateway to send and coordinate commands to ECUs to realize and manage autonomous driving. In this experimental study of autonomous driving vehicles control, a HARA (Hazard and Risk Analysis, ISO 26262:2018) has been done on vehicle level and strategies have been defined and implemented to manage safety situations where the car lateral control shall be hand over to a driver when in HAD 2 mode. The issue is that the switching to safe state shall not be done immediately but the vehicle has to stay in safe driving mode - fail-operational up to 4 seconds until a driver can take over. The UECE and other relevant studies show that it can take up to 6 seconds if driver/operator is not in the flow (HAD 3) and up to the 2 seconds when driver is in the flow (HAD 1). The paper makes assumptions and proposals about vehicle lateral control strategy to ensure the smooth take-over of the car by driver and its impact on control software development architectures.Web of Science27882981

    Trajectory planning based on adaptive model predictive control: Study of the performance of an autonomous vehicle in critical highway scenarios

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    Increasing automation in automotive industry is an important contribution to overcome many of the major societal challenges. However, testing and validating a highly autonomous vehicle is one of the biggest obstacles to the deployment of such vehicles, since they rely on data-driven and real-time sensors, actuators, complex algorithms, machine learning systems, and powerful processors to execute software, and they must be proven to be reliable and safe. For this reason, the verification, validation and testing (VVT) of autonomous vehicles is gaining interest and attention among the scientific community and there has been a number of significant efforts in this field. VVT helps developers and testers to determine any hidden faults, increasing systems confidence in safety, security, functional analysis, and in the ability to integrate autonomous prototypes into existing road networks. Other stakeholders like higher-management, public authorities and the public are also crucial to complete the VTT process. As autonomous vehicles require hundreds of millions of kilometers of testing driven on public roads before vehicle certification, simulations are playing a key role as they allow the simulation tools to virtually test millions of real-life scenarios, increasing safety and reducing costs, time and the need for physical road tests. In this study, a literature review is conducted to classify approaches for the VVT and an existing simulation tool is used to implement an autonomous driving system. The system will be characterized from the point of view of its performance in some critical highway scenarios.O aumento da automação na indústria automotiva é uma importante contribuição para superar muitos dos principais desafios da sociedade. No entanto, testar e validar um veículo altamente autónomo é um dos maiores obstáculos para a implantação de tais veículos, uma vez que eles contam com sensores, atuadores, algoritmos complexos, sistemas de aprendizagem de máquina e processadores potentes para executar softwares em tempo real, e devem ser comprovadamente confiáveis e seguros. Por esta razão, a verificação, validação e teste (VVT) de veículos autónomos está a ganhar interesse e atenção entre a comunidade científica e tem havido uma série de esforços significativos neste campo. A VVT ajuda os desenvolvedores e testadores a determinar quaisquer falhas ocultas, aumentando a confiança dos sistemas na segurança, proteção, análise funcional e na capacidade de integrar protótipos autónomos em redes rodoviárias existentes. Outras partes interessadas, como a alta administração, autoridades públicas e o público também são cruciais para concluir o processo de VTT. Como os veículos autónomos exigem centenas de milhões de quilómetros de testes conduzidos em vias públicas antes da certificação do veículo, as simulações estão a desempenhar cada vez mais um papel fundamental, pois permitem que as ferramentas de simulação testem virtualmente milhões de cenários da vida real, aumentando a segurança e reduzindo custos, tempo e necessidade de testes físicos em estrada. Neste estudo, é realizada uma revisão da literatura para classificar abordagens para a VVT e uma ferramenta de simulação existente é usada para implementar um sistema de direção autónoma. O sistema é caracterizado do ponto de vista do seu desempenho em alguns cenários críticos de autoestrad

    Novel Validation Techniques for Autonomous Vehicles

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    The automotive industry is facing challenges in producing electrical, connected, and autonomous vehicles. Even if these challenges are, from a technical point of view, independent from each other, the market and regulatory bodies require them to be developed and integrated simultaneously. The development of autonomous vehicles implies the development of highly dependable systems. This is a multidisciplinary activity involving knowledge from robotics, computer science, electrical and mechanical engineering, psychology, social studies, and ethics. Nowadays, many Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), like Emergency Braking System, Lane Keep Assistant, and Park Assist, are available. Newer luxury cars can drive by themselves on highways or park automatically, but the end goal is to develop completely autonomous driving vehicles, able to go by themselves, without needing human interventions in any situation. The more vehicles become autonomous, the greater the difficulty in keeping them reliable. It enhances the challenges in terms of development processes since their misbehaviors can lead to catastrophic consequences and, differently from the past, there is no more a human driver to mitigate the effects of erroneous behaviors. Primary threats to dependability come from three sources: misuse from the drivers, design systematic errors, and random hardware failures. These safety threats are addressed under various aspects, considering the particular type of item to be designed. In particular, for the sake of this work, we analyze those related to Functional Safety (FuSa), viewed as the ability of a system to react on time and in the proper way to the external environment. From the technological point of view, these behaviors are implemented by electrical and electronic items. Various standards to achieve FuSa have been released over the years. The first, released in 1998, was the IEC 61508. Its last version is the one released in 2010. This standard defines mainly: • a Functional Safety Management System (FSMS); • methods to determine a Safety Integrated Level (SIL); • methods to determine the probability of failures. To adapt the IEC61508 to the automotive industry’s peculiarity, a newer standard, the ISO26262, was released in 2011 then updated in 2018. This standard provides guidelines about FSMS, called in this case Safety Lifecycle, describing how to develop software and hardware components suitable for functional safety. It also provides a different way to compute the SIL, called in this case Automotive SIL (ASIL), allowing us to consider the average driver’s abilities to control the vehicle in case of failures. Moreover, it describes a way to determine the probability of random hardware failures through Failure Mode, Effects, and Diagnostic Analysis (FMEDA). This dissertation contains contributions to three topics: • random hardware failures mitigation; • improvementoftheISO26262HazardAnalysisandRiskAssessment(HARA); • real-time verification of the embedded software. As the main contribution of this dissertation, I address the safety threats due to random hardware failures (RHFs). For this purpose, I propose a novel simulation-based approach to aid the Failure Mode, Effects, and Diagnostic Analysis (FMEDA) required by the ISO26262 standard. Thanks to a SPICE-level model of the item, and the adoption of fault injection techniques, it is possible to simulate its behaviors obtaining useful information to classify the various failure modes. The proposed approach evolved from a mere simulation of the item, allowing only an item-level failure mode classification up to a vehicle-level analysis. The propagation of the failure modes’ effects on the whole vehicle enables us to assess the impacts on the vehicle’s drivability, improving the quality of the classifications. It can be advantageous where it is difficult to predict how the item-level misbehaviors propagate to the vehicle level, as in the case of a virtual differential gear or the mobility system of a robot. It has been chosen since it can be considered similar to the novel light vehicles, such as electric scooters, that are becoming more and more popular. Moreover, my research group has complete access to its design since it is realized by our university’s DIANA students’ team. When a SPICE-level simulation is too long to be performed, or it is not possible to develop a complete model of the item due to intellectual property protection rules, it is possible to aid this process through behavioral models of the item. A simulation of this kind has been performed on a mobile robotic system. Behavioral models of the electronic components were used, alongside mechanical simulations, to assess the software failure mitigation capabilities. Another contribution has been obtained by modifying the main one. The idea was to make it possible to aid also the Hazard Analysis and Risk Assessment (HARA). This assessment is performed during the concept phase, so before starting to design the item implementation. Its goal is to determine the hazards involved in the item functionality and their associated levels of risk. The end goal of this phase is a list of safety goals. For each one of these safety goals, an ASIL has to be determined. Since HARA relies only on designers expertise and knowledge, it lacks in objectivity and repeatability. Thanks to the simulation results, it is possible to predict the effects of the failures on the vehicle’s drivability, allowing us to improve the severity and controllability assessment, thus improving the objectivity. Moreover, since simulation conditions can be stored, it is possible, at any time, to recheck the results and to add new scenarios, improving the repeatability. The third group of contributions is about the real-time verification of embedded software. Through Hardware-In-the-Loop (HIL), a software integration verification has been performed to test a fundamental automotive component, mixed-criticality applications, and multi-agent robots. The first of these contributions is about real-time tests on Body Control Modules (BCM). These modules manage various electronic accessories in the vehicle’s body, like power windows and mirrors, air conditioning, immobilizer, central locking. The main characteristics of BCMs are the communications with other embedded computers via the car’s vehicle bus (Controller Area Network) and to have a high number (hundreds) of low-speed I/Os. As the second contribution, I propose a methodology to assess the error recovery system’s effects on mixed-criticality applications regarding deadline misses. The system runs two tasks: a critical airplane longitudinal control and a non-critical image compression algorithm. I start by presenting the approach on a benchmark application containing an instrumented bug into the lower criticality task; then, we improved it by injecting random errors inside the lower criticality task’s memory space through a debugger. In the latter case, thanks to the HIL, it is possible to pause the time domain simulation when the debugger operates and resume it once the injection is complete. In this way, it is possible to interact with the target without interfering with the simulation results, combining a full control of the target with an accurate time-domain assessment. The last contribution of this third group is about a methodology to verify, on multi-agent robots, the synchronization between two agents in charge to move the end effector of a delta robot: the correct position and speed of the end effector at any time is strongly affected by a loss of synchronization. The last two contributions may seem unrelated to the automotive industry, but interest in these applications is gaining. Mixed-criticality systems allow reducing the number of ECUs inside cars (for cost reduction), while the multi-agent approach is helpful to improve the cooperation of the connected cars with respect to other vehicles and the infrastructure. The fourth contribution, contained in the appendix, is about a machine learning application to improve the social acceptance of autonomous vehicles. The idea is to improve the comfort of the passengers by recognizing their emotions. I started with the idea to modify the vehicle’s driving style based on a real-time emotions recognition system but, due to the difficulties of performing such operations in an experimental setup, I move to analyze them offline. The emotions are determined on volunteers’ facial expressions recorded while viewing 3D representa- tions showing different calibrations. Thanks to the passengers’ emotional responses, it is possible to choose the better calibration from the comfort point of view

    Novel Validation Techniques for Autonomous Vehicles

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    L'abstract è presente nell'allegato / the abstract is in the attachmen

    Exploring the Collaborative Integration of Service Providers in the New Product Development Process of Automobile Manufacturers

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    This Doctorate of Business Administration thesis examines the collaborative integration of engineering service providers (ESPs) in the new product development (NPD) process of automobile manufacturers. Through 11 qualitative key informant interviews with leading suppliers and buyers and the analysis of two case studies with a total of 22 interviewees, the explorative study analyses collaboration models, risks, motives, barriers and best practice guidelines for the identified two most important cooperation models in the field. The thesis draws on the literature of NPD processes, collaborative NPD, early supplier involvement, knowledge management, and relationship management in the automotive sector. The theory provides an introduction and serves as a basis for the developed guideline model. The provided best practice guidelines, sorted into the categories of ‘people’, ‘process’, ‘collaboration technology’, and ‘product technology’, are expected to improve collaboration in the joint NPD of complex products or technologies if these are applied by the management. Thus, the guideline model serves as a managerial tool to set priorities in the different phases of joint development, facilitate joint activities, and optimize NPD efficiency. Insights from this research are broadly applicable in the context of outsourced development of highly complex products or technologies to service providers. The thesis concludes with the discussion of its contribution to practice and theory and with an outlook on future developments in the ESP market

    One proposal of software middleware for heterogenous in-vehicle environments

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    Ова докторска дисертација се бави истраживањем из области софтверских платформи у модерним возилима. Са појавом савремених технологија, број и сложеност функција у возилима расте, док произвођачима аутомобила постаје све теже да одржавају такве разноврсне системе због чега конвергирају уједињавању функција, тј. коришћењу што мањег броја савремених чипова на којима би се реализовао што већи број функција. Циљ истраживања у оквиру ове докторске дисертације је да се на основу истраживања стања у области предложи архитектура средњег слоја софтвера за рачунарски систем у возилима, која ће представљати корак напред у поменутој тежњи произвођача аутомобила. Предложено решење треба да омогући и бржи и једноставнији развој апликација у хетерогеном окружењу возила. Решење је реализовано на више платформи са циљем провере функционалности, перформанси решења као и евалуације архитектурних особина које утичу на једноставан развој апликација. Основни допринос се огледа у предложеној спрези која омогућава бржи развој апликација.Ova doktorska disertacija se bavi istraživanjem iz oblasti softverskih platformi u modernim vozilima. Sa pojavom savremenih tehnologija, broj i složenost funkcija u vozilima raste, dok proizvođačima automobila postaje sve teže da održavaju takve raznovrsne sisteme zbog čega konvergiraju ujedinjavanju funkcija, tj. korišćenju što manjeg broja savremenih čipova na kojima bi se realizovao što veći broj funkcija. Cilj istraživanja u okviru ove doktorske disertacije je da se na osnovu istraživanja stanja u oblasti predloži arhitektura srednjeg sloja softvera za računarski sistem u vozilima, koja će predstavljati korak napred u pomenutoj težnji proizvođača automobila. Predloženo rešenje treba da omogući i brži i jednostavniji razvoj aplikacija u heterogenom okruženju vozila. Rešenje je realizovano na više platformi sa ciljem provere funkcionalnosti, performansi rešenja kao i evaluacije arhitekturnih osobina koje utiču na jednostavan razvoj aplikacija. Osnovni doprinos se ogleda u predloženoj sprezi koja omogućava brži razvoj aplikacija.This PhD thesis addressed the problem of the software platforms in the field of heterogeneous in-vehicle environments. With modern technologies, the number and complexity of functions in the vehicle is constantly growing. It becomes harder for OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturer) to maintain such different systems, and as a result there is a tendency to use as few modern chips as possible in order to realize as many functions. The goal of the research within this PhD thesis is to propose, based on the research, software middleware architecture for modern vehicle systems, which will be a step forward in the mentioned aspiration of OEMs. The proposed solution should enable faster and easier development of the applications in such environment. The solution is implemented on the multiple hardware platforms in order to check functionality, performance and to evaluate architectural features that affect ease application development. The main contribution of the thesis is the proposed interface that allows faster and easier application development

    Certifications of Critical Systems – The CECRIS Experience

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    In recent years, a considerable amount of effort has been devoted, both in industry and academia, to the development, validation and verification of critical systems, i.e. those systems whose malfunctions or failures reach a critical level both in terms of risks to human life as well as having a large economic impact.Certifications of Critical Systems – The CECRIS Experience documents the main insights on Cost Effective Verification and Validation processes that were gained during work in the European Research Project CECRIS (acronym for Certification of Critical Systems). The objective of the research was to tackle the challenges of certification by focusing on those aspects that turn out to be more difficult/important for current and future critical systems industry: the effective use of methodologies, processes and tools.The CECRIS project took a step forward in the growing field of development, verification and validation and certification of critical systems. It focused on the more difficult/important aspects of critical system development, verification and validation and certification process. Starting from both the scientific and industrial state of the art methodologies for system development and the impact of their usage on the verification and validation and certification of critical systems, the project aimed at developing strategies and techniques supported by automatic or semi-automatic tools and methods for these activities, setting guidelines to support engineers during the planning of the verification and validation phases

    Certifications of Critical Systems – The CECRIS Experience

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    In recent years, a considerable amount of effort has been devoted, both in industry and academia, to the development, validation and verification of critical systems, i.e. those systems whose malfunctions or failures reach a critical level both in terms of risks to human life as well as having a large economic impact.Certifications of Critical Systems – The CECRIS Experience documents the main insights on Cost Effective Verification and Validation processes that were gained during work in the European Research Project CECRIS (acronym for Certification of Critical Systems). The objective of the research was to tackle the challenges of certification by focusing on those aspects that turn out to be more difficult/important for current and future critical systems industry: the effective use of methodologies, processes and tools.The CECRIS project took a step forward in the growing field of development, verification and validation and certification of critical systems. It focused on the more difficult/important aspects of critical system development, verification and validation and certification process. Starting from both the scientific and industrial state of the art methodologies for system development and the impact of their usage on the verification and validation and certification of critical systems, the project aimed at developing strategies and techniques supported by automatic or semi-automatic tools and methods for these activities, setting guidelines to support engineers during the planning of the verification and validation phases
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