The last decade has brought several disruptive innovations to the automotive industry. In order to provide our society with sustainable mobility, hybridization and electrification bring both chances but also tremendous challenges for the powertrain development, calibration and production. Next, Europe’s intention to drastically reduce traffic fatalities has seen significant progress through e.g. ADAS systems, with the ultimate goal of reaching zero-fatality by providing autonomous vehicles. Finally, car users accustomed to mobile devices like smart phones, smart watches and the like expect more and more similar usability and versatility in their cars as well.

Wireless sensors shall provide flexible instrumentation during development, test and use of vehicles (WSN based data acquisition). Smart, connected, wirelessly co-operating systems will allow development and testing functionality in vehicles providing safety and security (e.g. V2x systems, or remote updates and smart maintenance). In combination with high level, powerful cloud services, even new business models will become possible (e.g. route- and traffic-optimized platooning).

Robustness and dependability of communication is a basic requirement for almost all these use cases. The final key to introduce collaborating, smart systems is to establish – and prove! – trustable security. Public awareness of data privacy has risen significantly in the last few years. The value of data ownership is becoming more and more evident to citizens, businesses and legislation alike. Adding to that, several publications demonstrated strikingly potential threats of lacking security, leading to unsafe, potentially life threatening scenarios. Therefore we conclude that the benefits of connected, collaborating smart systems can only be introduced if we are able to deliver security and privacy as well.

For the automotive industry we see our main objectives in

  • Providing highly robust, dependable, and secure communication in and around vehicles, to connect sensors, processing elements and cooperating systems (e.g. personal mobile devices) for a new class of applications for development and use of vehicles. [WP12, WP13, WP14]

  • Further decreasing energy consumption of such devices, in order to allow solutions without restrictions from power cables or batteries (e.g. sufficient powering by energy harvesting). [WP25]

  • Providing scalable, robust and efficient solutions for authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA) for wirelessly communicating in embedded systems in automotive environments. [WP12]

  • Providing required means for development of such systems (architecture, concepts, interfaces, soft- and hardware building blocks, verification and validation methodology). [WP16]

  • Bridging the gap between vehicles, users, infrastructure and cloud-based computing, allowing development and operation of secure and trust-able collaborative applications, for enhancing safety of traffic participants, as well as increased efficiency, comfort and reliability of mobility systems. [WP20, WP11, WP16, WP15]

The objectives of SCOTT in terms of measureable indicators are:

  • Demonstrable methods to securely connect vehicles across transport modes], involving a collective of 10+ systems [WP11].

  • A demonstration of secure remote diagnostics and update system in a vehicle [WP11], e.g. updating the firmware of a control unit of the hybrid powertrain. As this includes higly safety-critical functionality (e.g. ASIL C or D), trust factors like integrity, confidentiality, and security become essential.

  • A secure cloud platform demonstration for providing vehicle lifecycle data applying SCOTT’s ‘privacy labelling’ (e.g. A++, A+, A, B …F) to allow easy-to-use privacy control by the end user [WP11], for a fleet of 10+ vehicles, and a simulated fleet of 10000+ vehicles. It will also showcase SCOTT’s privacy labelling (e.g. A++, A+, A, B …F) to allow easy-to-use privacy control by the end user

  • A demonstration of a secure, autonomous and scalable wireless sensor network for a powertrain test bed and a mobile test vehicle [WP12], replacing at least 25% of typically used sensors by wireless systems

  • A demonstration of pair-and-trust wireless smart sensor network for collection of real-time data in vehicles [WP13]

  • A vehicle demonstration of a secure extension to passive keyless entry systems that is able to detect the distance of the car key to the vehicle [WP14], with an accuracy better than 1 Meter

  • A demonstration of secure mechanisms enabling wirelessly connected trusted vehicles entering sensitive facilities [WP15], involving a collective of 10+ vehicles and 5+ buildings.