The Automated Driving Alliance by Bosch and CARIAD is now out on the roads with its first vehicles. Their goal: Collecting data to improve the self-driving functions.

About a year ago, CARIAD aligned with Bosch on software development in the Automated Driving Alliance. An extensive partnership focused on developing automated driving functions.

This partnership signified a major shift for both companies: from a supplier-customer relationship to partners on eye-level. Today, this is already manifested by the Alliance development teams every day. Around 1,500 employees are working shoulder to shoulder in joint offices across Germany, with hubs in Ingolstadt and around Stuttgart. Both Bosch and CARIAD are providing half of the team.

The Automated Driving Alliance is first working on introducing a driver assistance system with active lane changes on the motorway. The target system will then allow hands-free driving in a wide variety of situations (Level 3). An expansion to include Level 4 functionalities is being evaluated.

In order to bring their joint developments into the vehicle as quickly as possible, an agile working model is essential. Short planning cycles and iterative development are allowing the Alliance to gain traction. In this aspect, the first major milestone has already been completed: building up the software stack for automated driving functions.

Now the development teams focus on the next important step: hitting the road with an ever-growing fleet of vehicles.

They can rely on test vehicles from the Alliance, comprehensively equipped with new sensors and new electronic control units (ECUs). The ramp-up phase for this vehicle fleet has already started, and it’s being expanded step by step for data acquisition and testing.

As the Alliance’s software stack has already been integrated in the first vehicles, the ADAS/AD functions can now be tested in multiple environments. In simulations; with cars on the road; in closed-loop systems where functions are taking over driving tasks; and in open-loop systems gathering valuable data.

The first cars on the road, with their open-loop systems, are now collecting and recording measurement data. For sensor data processing and sensor fusion, for example, that will help make sense of all the information obtained by the various sensors on the car. And for the robustness of driving functions as well. Allowing the teams to further optimize the current software stack and develop new algorithms.