System of Systems Based Approach for the Development of Autonomous Ride-Pooling Vehicles

The development of autonomous vehicles has been accelerating in the last years. Especially vehicles designed for ride-pooling and ride-hailing are tested in pilot projects and are getting more mature. These autonomous driving Mobility-as-a-Service (AD MaaS) vehicles pose new technical and organizational challenges for the automotive industry: The technological complexity is growing, and new concepts are needed. Furthermore, today’s AD MaaS vehicle projects are characterized by the involvement of different independent organizations. These must agree on a common working mode, overcoming organizational boundaries. To manage the resulting complexity of these projects, new approaches are necessary to modify traditional development processes.

This publication presents an approach based on Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE). The system of interest is complemented by a superior system level, representing the mobility system. Besides the vehicle, other systems such as the self-driving system, a fleet operator and mobility provider are considered subsystems of the “SoS AD MaaS”.

This article is structured into five chapters: A brief introduction, followed by the current state of the art of AD MaaS projects and the relevant basics of MBSE. The methodology and the associated reference system model are described in the third chapter. The application of the approach for an autonomous ride-pooling vehicle is presented in Sect. 4, followed by a discussion of the results and an outlook.