Project FLEUR

Certification of functional safety, which for the automotive industry is regulated by the ISO 26262 standard, requires suppliers to demonstrate a systematic approach to the consideration, minimization, and documentation of potential safety risks. This research initiative aims to optimize development processes in medium-sized companies so that these requirements can be more efficiently met. For example, costs arising from a particular client‘s safety requirements can be reduced, allowing a company to remain competitive. The focus of the project is on electronic sensor and wireless communication technologies, which are often subject to very high safety requirements due to the central role they play in modern vehicle systems.

The approach

The project partners will develop and implement procedures to improve the identification of safety requirements, the traceability of the resulting design decisions for electronic components, and the reuse of implementations. To this end, companies’ existing design flows must be more closely linked to the additional processes required for functional safety. In terms of research and technology, the project aims to create more efficient processes for the development of complex hardware and software systems. This will be achieved by creating interfaces between previously separate fields of work, standardizing and documenting development steps, and preparing basic elements of these processes.

Efficient synergies between different parts of a company, such as product management and functional safety management, require the creation of interfaces, and exchange of consistent information between the tools used by each department. Only then can functional safety managers have access to all the information they need to document a certain functionality and required level of safety. Besides this support in the design process, innovative technologies to automatically assess and ensure diagnostic coverage will also be developed. In addition, the project partners will explore methods to determine the error rate of electromechanical components in relation to applicable standards.