Graceful degradation for driver assistance systems

Abstract

In a future car-IT architecture consisting of a centralized grid-cluster of good-performance electronic control units connected via a switched high-bandwidth communication network, new possibilities for driver assistance systems come up. Working on raw data in combination with strong central processing units allows advanced signal processing. In case of breakdown which results in reduced available communication bandwidth and/or reduced available calculating power, graceful degradation will help to keep the system running. That means either the data acquisition can work at lower performance (lower angular resolution, lower update rate etc.) to reduce the calculation power demand as well as the network data rate, or a part of the signal chain can dynamically be shifted to smart-sensors and make them work similar to current sensors like Bosch's Adaptive Cruise Control [1]. In this case, only a list of objects instead of raw data is transmitted to the electronic control unit where a (brake- or accelerate-) decision could be made with low calculation power while accepting a lower overall system performance.