Engineering researchers at UW look at safety and security of automated vehicles

University of Waterloo is taking a step closer inthe future development of automated vehicles by partnering with vehicle supplier Magna International.

As vehiclesbecome increasingly more advanced and autonomous, researchers with the school'sAutonomous Vehicle Research and Intelligence Labwill be looking at how to make automated vehicles safer and more secure.

Magna International will be providing avehicle for the project, which Sebastian Fischmeister, a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, said will be a major benefit totheir research.

"Usually cars are closed systems. As a researcher you can't just go into a car and replace something and try out your own thing,"Fischmeistersaid.

"The messages that are transmitted in the car are not public, you don't know what the bits and pieces mean."

Challenges with automated systems

Automated vehicles are different fromfully autonomous vehicles, where the driver can sit back and let the vehicle drive itself, Fischmeister explained.

An automated approach is moreincremental the vehicleautomates one driver function after another until the vehicle reaches a point where the driver doesn't have to pay attention, he said,which can presentitsown setof challenges.

"When you use any aid function like for example, your adaptive cruise control or lane centring, you have the expectation that the car doesn't crash, that the car doesn't do any bad action," he said.

"What we specifically look into is how can we use modern software and system paradigmslike for example, machine learning, in a context that you can trust the system."

And an added challenge to that, Fischmeister said,ismaking sure thosesystems remainsecure.

"Now that all these vehicles are connected, you have the risk of someone sittingsomewhere and through the internet and through connectivityreaching outto all vehicles of a particular manufacture," he said.

"That's why safety and security are the key challenges."

Fischmeister adds that by having access to the vehicle, Magna's expertise and knowledge of automotive systems, it means researchers can now conduct their own experiments to improve the systemand test how they will perform in real life.

"We can, for example, go in and replace the camera with a more experimental system and try out and see how well our research framework and research results apply in this particular case," he said.

You can hear the full interview below: