A “Common Core” Architecture as an Enabler for Cross-Platform Autonomous Driving

Autonomous Driving (AD) is expected to heavily change the landscape of future mobility solutions, with machines carrying out the driving task to larger and larger extents. A wide range of applications for this disruptive technology exist, such as driving in urban environments or in highway scenarios. Within this challenging field, Continental is developing driverless solutions, relying on a vehicle fleet covering various AD applications. In this paper, we present our approach of a “Common Core” software architecture for AD systems, allowing to effectively share AD key elements between different AD platforms. This includes the description of applied design principles, resulting advantages, limitations as well as impressions of real-life demonstrations and future development directions.