Autonomous Cars from a Unique Perspective: Reality

There’s no longer any question about it: autonomous vehicles are coming. The real question is when and how they’ll move off the drawing board and test track and onto our streets and highways.

Some say self-driving cars will be on the road as early as this year, safely transporting occupants over any road, over any distance, in any weather, to virtually any destination.

Others say the obstacles to autonomous cars—safety concerns, technological challenges, regulatory issues, consumer education, and cultural barriers—will take decades to overcome. But whatever the timeframe, ultimately the most pivotal issue that will drive the commercial availability of the autonomous car is production readiness.

The technological innovation propelling the autonomous car forward has been astonishing, and it continues to accelerate at a faster rate than most expected. But what’s particularly new is that the innovation around autonomous vehicles is heavily software-centric. The challenge is to add value with new embedded software development tools and techniques for autonomous vehicles.

Wind River®, the leader in embedded software and a long-time partner to automotive original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), has joined forces with Ricardo, a global engineering consultancy with extensive automotive expertise, to deliver the stable and sustainable foundation the auto industry requires to support advancing the autonomous car from concept to production-ready reality. This paper examines the technical challenges facing the industry and reviews the specific capabilities Wind River and Ricardo bring to the table.

In this white paper, sponsored by Wind River, you’ll learn about:

  • How software drives the value of the autonomous car
  • The core requirements of production-ready software
  • Starting-point use cases
  • The partnership between Wind River and Ricardo