Automotive Software Engineering & Functional Safety (2022)

Nowadays, premium cars have 50+ control units, which contain well over 100 million lines of code. Hundreds of messages and thousands of signals are transmitted via different communication buses. More than 90% of all innovations in the automotive sector are already electronics-/software-based today. An automobile thus bundles many questions of computer science on 5 x 2 square meters, including the development of complex and safe software systems.

In this lecture, we'll discuss fundamentals, peculiarities, and challenges of software engineering in the automotive domain. We'll cover the core process for in-vehicle software development and make ourselves familiar with selected methods used in the development of automotive software. As many software-based systems are safety-related, we'll put emphasis on the safety aspects of in-vehicle software development. As a foundation, we'll cover selected technical fundamentals of automotive electric / electronic (E/E) systems.