Safety remains a key concern for the autonomous driving industry. Under the motto „No compromises on the road to safe autonomous driving“, the Autonomous Main Event 2024 brought together leading companies and experts from the mobility industry to underline their commitment to the highest safety standards. The event, which took place in the fifth year of „The Autonomous“ initiative, was extended to two days and set a new attendance record with over 580 participants and more than 250 companies.
The importance of safety for autonomous driving reflects the growing awareness that public trust and safe systems are closely linked. A key theme of the conference was collaboration within partnerships and ecosystems, which are seen as crucial to success in the area of safety. Dirk Linzmeier, CEO of TTTech Auto, emphasized that security is non-negotiable and that no compromises should be allowed.
The focus was also on the work of the working groups sponsored by „The Autonomous“. The working group for safety and architecture presented a report evaluating various hardware and software architectures. Asymmetric architectures based on a „majority voting“ approach were found to be particularly suitable for autonomous driving systems. The group plans to continue this work and develop further safety concepts. In another workshop, Jürgen Schaefer from Infineon emphasized that artificial intelligence can play a central role in planning and control functions. Among other things, the use of AI can improve tracking accuracy by 50%, increase energy efficiency by 10% and significantly reduce computing costs.
During a panel discussion on the secure architecture of autonomous vehicles, Mathias Pillin from Bosch emphasized the importance of redundancy in the systems. However, redundancy alone is not enough – diversity is also necessary to effectively avoid errors.
Mathias Pillin, CTO of Bosch Mobility: „Also pay attention to the power supply system. The wiring harness can be a source of error, so we need a redundant way to distribute the power in the vehicle.“ (© Bosch)
Shai Shalev-Shwartz, CTO of Mobileye, presented an approach that focuses on responsible security and emphasized the need to place greater emphasis on ethical issues. Legal framework conditions were also discussed. Level 4 autonomy will become increasingly important in countries with favorable regulatory conditions, such as Texas, particularly in the commercial vehicle sector.
Another focus was on the development towards software-defined vehicles (SDVs). These are seen as the future of the automotive industry, as the separation of software and hardware requires new vehicle architectures. However, this brings with it both technological and cultural challenges, as software and hardware developers often take different approaches. The conference emphasized the need for close collaboration between these disciplines to ensure safety standards in SDVs. An Elektrobit workshop focused on the use of open source software in SDVs. The participants agreed that open source will play an important role in the future, but that it is a challenge to ensure warranty and support for these products. Cloud technologies will also play a central role in SDVs.
In his keynote speech, Lars Reger, CTO and EVP of NXP Semiconductors, expanded the discussion beyond pure automotive hardware and software and described the concept of the „great awakening of robots“. (© NXP)
Lars Reger, CTO of NXP Semiconductors, expanded on the discussion in his keynote speech and pointed out the growing complexity of integrating software and hardware in vehicles. „ECUs contain dozens to hundreds of hardware and software components. Functions and variants of car models further drive complexity. He called for a single hardware platform to reduce complexity and facilitate integration.
The Autonomous Main Event clearly showed that safety is not just a technical issue, but also encompasses organizational and cultural aspects. The industry recognizes the importance of working together to develop safe and reliable autonomous vehicles and plans to intensify this collaboration in the coming years. The next event will take place on September 17 and 18, 2025. (oe)
