Operational Context-Based Design Method of Autonomous Vehicles Logical Architectures

Autonomous Vehicles (AV) exhibit new characteristics rendering its architecting process challenging. They are context-aware cyber-physical systems with a high sensitivity toward their operational context. In addition to the lack of industrial feedback, their architecture needs to be adapted to their Operational Context (OC). The current literature doesn’t provide a clear method for designing AV architecture based on their OC. This paper proposes a four steps method following the Concept of Operation approach (ConOps) and functional chain modeling to design AV architecture based on their OC and experts knowledge. The method uses a state-of the-art OC ontology for AV and improves the identification speed and coverage of the AV’s operational needs. A case study is presented addressing the proposed methods and limitations.