Transportation - Application Domains
We have classified our concrete applications of the division Transportation's ICT-Research and -Development in the following R&D-Groups.
Cooperative Mobile Systems
In order to meet future mobility and transport requirements, road vehicles for passenger and freight traffic as well as public transport systems gain an increasing degree of autonomy and will be embedded into an intelligent infrastructure, which relies on information and communication technology. The Cooperative Mobile Systems group targets autonomous systems such as autonomous transport vehicles and unmanned aerial vehicles as well as smart environments in which they operate. A main objective is to achieve deployability of autonomous systems in real industrial or urban environments. The group develops tools and methods for a reliable perception of the environment and for cooperative behaviour in order to achieve a safe and efficient operation. Further aspects are the integration of sensor data into a consistent view on the environment and the design as an overall system of systems. more
Human Centered Design
In this application domain, we work on the development of intuitively understandable and easy to use assistance systems to support car drivers, pilots, and captains. The human being, with his abilities and needs, is moved into the center of all design decisions, to ensure that new electronic assistance systems significantly reduce the still too high accident rates. Moreover, mobility in the elderly has to be guaranteed by assistance functions, for example in cars that compensate age-related weaknesses and wisely support available strengths. A central challenge of this application domain is the supply of design methodologies for the development of assistance systems that enable a continuous quality management in parallel to the design process from the viewpoint of the final end user. Therefore, on the basis of experiments in driving or flight simulators, OFFIS creates virtual test drivers and test pilots respectively as so-called cognitive models, and is embedding these into the industrial design process. more
Safety Analysis & Verification
Growing requirements on mobility and safety, and also the wish to always stay online in transit, lead to an exponential growing number of functions in cars. To be able to ensure safety in spite of this complexity according to the strict requirements of the aviation and aerospace industry, train domain, as well as automotive industry, OFFIS develops in this subject area methodologies to prove the safety of embedded systems that are integrated in these products. These stretch from an early functional hazard analysis and comprehensive mutual reactions of failures in-between mechanic, hydraulic, electric, and hardware/software components, to the analysis of the erratic behavior of hardware components. Model-based analysis methods for the determination of error effects and causes, as well as formal methods for the coverage of the necessary argumentation for proof of safety, belong to this. With adherence to actual safety standards, these can be integrated into platforms for the industrial development of safety critical systems and, thereby, improve the actual international standards just as well as the costs of system development. OFFIS also positions its experience in safety analysis and real-time analysis techniques as a development member in Autosar. more
E/E Architecture Analysis & Design
Increasing requirements on the quality of electronic systems on one side, and on the other side raising cost pressure – inside this area of conflict this application domain provides a set of methodologies and tools close to the process that enables and accelerate the development of high-quality but also competitive networked electronic systems. Component-based design processes, enriched with the most current analysis and synthesis methodologies, permit a significant reuse of developed applications and, thereby, contributes to a drastic reduction of the development costs. The proof of formalized system requirements already in the early phases of the development is part of the spectrum of methodologies, as is the automated search for possibly inexpensive implementations complying with the quality requirements, especially under consideration of real-time and robustness requirements. The embedding into industrial development processes is considered significantly important. weiter
Hardware / Software Design Methodology
The increasing complexity of embedded HW/SW systems on one side and shortened product life cycles on the other, require support by the design methodology. Hence, we develop in this application domain concepts and tools to improve the design process for so-called “Systems on a Chip” (SoC). It is the main approach to confront complexity with the enhancement of expressiveness of the electronic system level (ESL) languages, and thereby enable a seamless design process from a detailed specification all the way to the physical implementation. The modeling and refinement methodology enables the mapping of adaptive applications on diverse heterogeneous implementation platforms. more
Analysis of nanometric ICs
Many products today are only possible because of integrated electronics. The design of smaller and smaller, yet more powerful, embedded hardware and software systems provides industry and research with new challenges. These arise both from the rapidly advancing manufacturing technology, enabling more complex system architectures at a very small space, but also from the increasing demands of modern applications in processing speed and energy efficiency.
Since many years, OFFIS researches... more
