Towards Certification of Automotive Software

During the last decade, common automotive vehicles received an increased number of electronic components running embedded software, enabling them to become more efficient, comfortable, safer and usable; unfortunately this is also causing an increase of vehicle recalls to fix software defects. Aware of this problem, the automotive industry has been adopting software development and safety standards from other industries, as well as developing its own. However, none has been used so-far as base for certification processes, meaning that there is no obligation to have independent parties attesting that the best development, safety or architectural practices are being followed. With the publication of ISO 26262, manufacturers, suppliers and automotive organizations are finally able to agree on a common schema for the certification of automotive software. This paper describes the most relevant standards that have been used in the automotive industry, namely for software development, stressing the development and safety lifecycle. It then addresses software certification and some of the main challenges it poses to this industry.