Middleware for autonomous cars

The Connext DDS middleware from Real-Time Innovations (RTI) has a key role in the autonomous car design: It provides reliable, physics-speed connections between smart devices and subsystems.

With RTI Connext DDS, modules communicate by simply publishing the data and commands they produce and by subscribing to the data they need. In the case of autonomous cars, systems must ensure performance to successfully connect components, optimise safety at every level of a fully autonomous system, and make it easier to integrate complex, reliable software. Familiar names such as Audi and Volkswagen are among the carmakers that have already introduced RTI Connext DDS to enable high-performance connectivity for testing and enhancing today’s smart cars. Audi was able to replace a proprietary fiber network and test rig with a DDS databus. RTI middleware enables a modular test environment with the speed to handle data coming from all of the electronic systems in a vehicle during simulated operation. VW uses RTI Connext DDS to help drivers avoid obstacles, detect lane departures, track eye activity, and safely negotiate turns.

Bob Leigh, Director of Market Development at RTI: “RTI is further expanding in the sectors of autonomous driving, driver systems and connected car. These are exciting technology areas with an enormous future potential and the ideal application field for our Connext DDS middleware. Components in autonomous cars continuously make real-time local decisions, while intelligent vehicle manufacturers have to meet demanding requirements in distributed systems design for safety, resilience, security, scalability, fault tolerance, and fast data processing.”

RTI has become a trusted expert assisting the innovators of future autonomous cars. The ease of integration and flexible, reliable, and fast publish-subscribe data model of the RTI Connext DDS middleware are uniquely suited to addressing many of the toughest challenges posed by autonomous cars, e. g. vehicle subsystem integration and control, inter-vehicle interactions for collision avoidance, tracking and control functions for traffic monitoring, sensor and camera data aggregation at millisecond speeds, as well as reliable communications over unreliable channels, such as wireless and cellular. 

RTI Connext DDS addresses many of the toughest challenges posed by autonomous cars, such as the interaction between vehicles or control systems.