Remote Software Updates for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems

Authors

P. Wessel, MMP, RWTH Aachen University

Summary

Safety and security aspects are playing an increasingly important role for the automotive industry in the product development and evolution. This applies in particular to complex software systems for advanced driver assistance systems. These must be regularly maintained and updated, as outdated software components can become a safety and security risk. Updating vehicle software is traditionally carried out at service centers, but this causes high costs for the OEMs. Therefore, the ability to perform re-mote updates of vehicle software components becomes increasingly important. This paper presents an approach to remotely update a driver assistance system running on an automotive control unit. The proposed solution consists of an NVIDIA SOC running a Driver Monitoring System (DMS) developed by FEV which is connected to the Vehicle Connectivity Gateway (VCG-2) and updated via the Life Cycle Management server both provided by DSA. The VCG-2 offers full vehicle life cycle management functionality, i.e. software and firmware updates over-the-air, cloud connectivity, vehicle health monitoring and administration, and remote diagnostics. Updates for the DMS are received via the VCG-2 and transferred to the NVIDIA controller. The DMS monitors the driver's attention using multiple cameras and brainwave activity detection systems using artificial neural networks. It consists of a series of algorithms for detecting various features such as face pose estimation, emotion detection, and eye gaze estimation. Based on the results, preventive measures can be taken to increase the safety of the driver and other traffic participants. This connected solution aims to demonstrate the use case of securely updating complex driver assistance systems without the need of driving to a service center. It is shown that updates can be received by the VCG-2 via a secure wireless communication channel and successfully be transferred to the NVIDIA board, so that afterwards, updated functionality can be added to the DMS.