Safety and Security for Automotive Systems

Functional safety is critical for ensuring that the complex electronics in today's vehicles are reliably delivering consistent performance over time, without system failures. Ansys medini analyze software implements the needed safety analysis methods — hazard and operability (HAZOP) analysis; hazard analysis and risk assessment (HARA); fault tree analysis (FTA); failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA); and failure modes, effects and diagnostic analysis (FMEDA) — all in one integrated tool. This model-based environment ensures consistent execution of the safety-related activities required by applicable safety standards like ISO 26262. With medini analyze, engineers can ensure that sophisticated electronics work reliably, with any failures detected and properly addressed.

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The increased amount of software and connectivity has created numerous openings for cyberattack. Between recent headlines focusing on automotive hacking and the ISO 21434 standard (Road vehicles — Cybersecurity engineering), engineers need to mitigate cyberattacks and consider automotive cybersecurity as part of the product development process. Ansys medini analyze for Cybersecurity verifies system-level security in an easy-to-use modeling and analysis tool that ensures the electronics architecture, with its many connections and interfaces, is impervious to external attacks. By quickly identifying and addressing vulnerabilities and design weaknesses, engineers can deliver safe and secure products, reduce time to market, maximize profit margins and comply with upcoming regulations surrounding cybersecurity.

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To reduce complexity and enhance safety, manufacturers and suppliers must comply with standards (e.g., ISO 26262 and AUTOSAR) for engineering active and passive safety systems in vehicles. Ansys SCADE is a model-based embedded software development and simulation environment with a built-in automatic code generator that can accelerate automotive embedded software development projects. With SCADE, engineers can streamline designs and verification processes with automatic code generation of ISO 26262 ASIL D critical software and easily integrate into existing AUTOSAR development flows to design and generate software components, eliminating time-consuming manual reviews.

Learn More: Driving Speed and Reliability in Automotive Systems Engineering: The Need for a Model-Based Solution

Automated driving (AD) systems, such as adaptive cruise control, automated emergency braking, lane departure warning systems, forward collision avoidance systems and pedestrian detection technologies, are aimed at combatting the problem of driver error and reducing accidents. However, AD technologies only improve overall safety if they operate flawlessly under every operational scenario. As automakers seek to steadily increase their vehicles' AD capabilities — approaching SAE Levels 3 and 4 —  the ability to master the design complexity by a model-based development approach and to analyze and validate design candidates in early phases through simulation have emerged as key differentiating factors. The Ansys SCADE family of model-based embedded software development solutions is designed specifically to support the development of AD and other safety-critical technologies, offering significant time and cost savings over traditional development methods.  

Learn More: Explore how automakers are improving the accuracy and speed of embedded software development by 50%.

SCADE and the Ansys VRXPERIENCE Driving Simulator powered by SCANeR support all validation and verification activities for the AD embedded software model. Working together, these two solutions simulate real-world AD performance, improve the software design, then re-test it until the desired performance level is reached. As the level of autonomy progresses from level 0 (no automation or assistance) to level 5 (full autonomy), the simulation of the entire driving experience is essential for achieving a five-star NCAP rating.

SOTIF identifies and addresses potentially hazardous performance shortfalls in autonomous vehicle systems that occur even in the absence of a system failure. This includes performance limitations of sensors or object recognition, as well as improperly handled events in the road environment. Ansys medini analyze can easily navigate the systematic identification, evaluation and subsequent risk mitigation of these hazards. Engineers can simultaneously meet the demands of both functional safety and SOTIF standards — ISO 26262 and ISO 21448, respectively — using Ansys software. Whatever the cause of a potential safety issue, whether a software bug or a sensor limitation, the linkage between safety analysis and the overall system architecture allows medini analyze to clearly identify cause–effect chains throughout the system components and specify appropriate measures to mitigate the root cause of the inappropriate behavior. 

Learn More: Explore Safety of the Intended Functionality: How Ansys Can Help You Meet This New Standard for Autonomous Vehicles

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Reduce costs of automated driving system embedded perception software testing and safety with Ansys SCADE Vision powered by Hologram. As it automatically analyzes video-based sensor data from test drives of simulated traffic scenarios, SCADE Vision augments the original video input with artificial disturbances to identify scenes where the object recognition of the software under test comes close to its limits. This empowers perception engineers to review far fewer scenes that show edge cases and assign tags that indicate potential root causes of the abnormality, such as heavy rain resulting in weak detection. These abnormalities, together with the assigned tags, can then be exported back into medini analyze to complete the causal analysis. In compliance with SOTIF standards, a safety analyst can then draw the right conclusions and recommend counteractions, ranging from improved training sets for perception algorithms to specific filters or even the incorporation of additional sensors.

Learn More: Resolving Visual "Edge Cases" Leads to Safer Autonomous Vehicles

Many of the engineering challenges surrounding electric vehicles (EVs) center on the electric battery and its management system. Batteries need to charge efficiently, store energy effectively and operate safely, delivering reliable performance over years of usage. Also, because the battery system brings together hardware and software, development teams have traditionally worked separately. Ansys is changing that with the industry's only integrated simulation platform for battery design and battery management system (BMS) development. Ansys' solution enables functional safety analysis for BMS designs, delivers critical software development that meets the objectives of ISO 26262 at the highest ASIL levels and provides system simulation to understand all system interactions. This enables teams to reduce the time and costs involved in new BMS and battery launches, increase the accuracy and quality of the design and improve the performance and safety of the entire battery system.

Learn More: Charged Up: A Holistic Approach to Developing Large-Scale Battery Management Systems

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The design of electrified powertrains requires a rigorous development approach and advanced design techniques to efficiently capture the embedded system architecture and associated mandatory requirements, and to implement various safety-critical software components. Behind every complex component of an electrified system is a need for a smart and safe software controller that manages the performance and the safety of the system over the lifetime of the component and the system. Ansys solutions for electrification of powertrains provide a complete development flow from the system level to the software level, including model-based development, functional safety analysis and  embedded software development, to ensure that your powertrain behaves as designed. With our automatic code generation capabilities, you can significantly reduce the time to certification in compliance with the highest levels of safety standards such as ISO 26262 (up to ASIL D) in automotive.

Learn More: Take Control of ECUs with Ansys SCADE