SAE EPR2021009

As automobiles morph from stand-alone mechanical objects to highly connected, autonomous systems with increasing amounts of electronic components. To manage these complex systems, some semblance of in-car decision-making is also being built and networked to a cloud architecture. This cloud can also enable even deeper capabilities within the broader automotive ecosystem.

Unsettled Issues Regarding Autonomous Vehicles and Open-source Software introduces the impact of software in advanced automotive applications, the role of open-source communities in accelerating innovation, and the important topic of safety and cybersecurity. As electronic functionality is captured in software and a bigger percentage of that software is open-source code, some critical challenges arise concerning security and validation.