Space for safer cars

A spacecraft tool is now improving car safety by stress-testing many of the internal computer systems to be sure they work well when the car is on the road.

Designed to test how computers on spacecraft react to cosmic radiation, the Xception software used by ESA proved to be the right tool to check the tiny computer controlling a car dashboard display.

This rather advanced space technology is now being extended to help guarantee the faultless performance of safety-critical car systems, like the brakes.

Features like navigation, cruise control, parking sensors and engine and gearbox management, also driven by microcomputers, could be the next to be scrutinised.

Safety first in space

Testing the robustness of both hardware and software is nothing new for ESA, who always demands the highest quality standards.

The company developed Xception to simulate unplanned scenarios and monitor how the spacecraft might react. Is the software robust enough to understand there was a glitch in the data and recover?

Since then, it has helped to qualify numerous satellites for space, including CryoSat to observe Earth’s ice and Swarm to monitor our magnetic field.

Under the ESA-funded National Technology Transfer Initiative in Portugal, Instituto Pedro Nunes (IPN) and Portugal’s Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia’ funding agency supporting science, technology and innovation helped the company to modify their fault injection technology for testing car parts.

Driving from Mars

The company also developed the new ‘XLuna’ for a demonstration vehicle for ESA’s ExoMars rover. It allows both safety and non-safety-essential software to run alongside each other in the same processor, rather than each function requiring its own separate microcomputer.

A rover carries complex software, some of which controls science and some of which manages the vehicle’s basic operation.

By separating the functions so they can co-exist on the same processor, it is possible to reduce the number of onboard computers – vital in space where every gram counts.

This could be yet another spin-off from space to the automotive world. The company has already been requested to adapt XLuna for car applications such as eCall, an EU initiative to fit all new cars by 2018 with a wireless device that automatically sends a distress signal to emergency services in an accident, reducing response times and saving lives.

XLuna would allow the eCall software to share the same hardware as the entertainment system without compromising the safety function of eCall.

Looking further ahead, as we prepare to ditch our steering wheels for the driverless road, we might find ourselves riding in a self-driving car using software perfected for a Mars rover.

Source: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Engineering_Technology/TTP2/Space_for_safer_cars