Scientists:	Dr. Holger Kinkelin, Richard von Seck, Johannes Schleger, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Georg Carle
Duration:	01.01.2019 – 31.12.2021
Funding:	BMBF (Federal Ministry for Education and Research)
Homepage:	http://vitaf-projekt.de

Description

The vehicle of the future is a internally and externally highly networked computer system. Based on a plethora of sensor data, which are evaluated by complex algorithms, the car is depending on its degree of automation able to temporarily take corrective actions (emergency breaking, lane keeping assistance, etc.) or to drive autonomously for a longer period of time.

The safety of an autonomous car now depends on data collected by sensors. This includes sensors inside the car (ultrasonic sensor, radar sensor, etc.), sensors of other cars in close proximity (vehicle to vehicle (V2V) communication) but also data originating from back end IT systems like traffic guidance systems of motorways (vehicle to infrastructure (V2I) communication) or of car manufacturers (vehicle to enterprise (V2E) communication).

The plethora of processed data and their criticality for the car's safety make it necessary to protect their authenticity and integrity. Furthermore, it must be assured that the data originated from a trustworthy system, for instance, a car whose sensors function correctly and which processed the data correctly. Otherwise, fake information might be populated between cars which might cause accidents in extreme cases. For these reasons, the goal of the VITAF project is the creation of technologies which are the basis of trustworthy autonomous driving. These technologies shall be evaluated in a demonstrator.

Besides taking care of the trustworthiness of data related to autonomous driving, VITAF also strives for creating solutions that protect the often person-related data in order to, for instance, prevent the tracing of an automobile and its driver. For this purpose, a solution how person-related data can be processed in this scenario will be elaborated.

After finishing the project, the developed approaches and mechanisms shall be refined by the industrial partners and exploited for future generations of autonomous cars.

VITAF is focusing on four classes of problems:

• Trustworthy controllers in autonomous cars
• Trustworthy car-internal data transmission and storage
• Trustworthy communication with external entities (V2V, V2I, V2E)
• Data protection and data minimization

Partners:

• AVL Software & Functions GmbH
• b-plus GmbH
• easycore GmbH
• Fraunhofer-Institut für Sichere Informationstechnologie (SIT)
• Hochschule für Wirtschaft und Recht Berlin
• Technische Hochschule Deggendorf