Towards an architecture for an UI-compositor for multi-OS environments

Abstract

Separation through hardware/software virtualization on operating system (OS) layer reduces complexity in automotive software. Automotive software is categorized into domains (e.g. comfort, safety related features, driver assistance) and each domain is handled by a separate OS, which contains domain-specific applications. A common user interface (UI) for all applications from all domains is created through an UI-Compositor, which composites and manages the different input/output modalities. While interactions with a single OS with multiple applications and input/output modalities are well known, we find that a composition of applications from different OSs or a composition of multiple OSs into a single UI is challenging. In this paper we investigate architectural patterns for an UI-Compositor for Multi-OS environments and suggest a new architecture that supports the concept of separation.