Towards (Semi-)Automated Synthesis of Runtime Safety Models: A Safety-Oriented Design Approach for Service Architectures of Cooperative Autonomous Systems

Abstract

Future automotive systems will exhibit ever-higher grades of automation up to the point of autonomy. The full potential in automation can only be unlocked when combining it with the capability of cooperation, leading to the vision of comprehensively networked cooperative autonomous systems (CAS). To enable a safe CAS cooperation at runtime, we introduced the ConSert approach in previous work, which allows fully automated safety interface compatibility checks in the field based on runtime safety models. However, a systematic engineering approach for synthesizing these runtime safety models based on design time architecture and safety models does not exist to date. As all safety-engineering activities require the functional description of a system as input, we describe in this paper, how a top-down service-based design approach can look like for CAS, preparing an effective safety analysis and formulation of black-box behavioral deviation bounds in shape of safety guarantees and demands. Thereby, we point out challenges, which especially occur due to the complexity introduced by the distributed development of CAS. These challenges are exemplified for the traffic light assistant system, an example CAS from the automotive domain.