Excelfore announced it is working with Siemens Digital Industries Software to demonstrate its eSync OTA technology with Siemens’ Capital VSTAR software, an implementation of the industry-standard AUTOSAR.

The two companies have created a demonstration platform, with the components of the Excelfore eSync software development kit (SDK) and Capital VSTAR, to create a working solution for updating the AUTOSAR firmware for in-vehicle electronic control units (ECUs). This can facilitate updating AUTOSAR-based devices over the air (OTA) via the eSync secure bi-directional data pipeline to the cloud.

Henrik Olsen, Director of Embedded Software at Mentor, a Siemens Business, said, “The collaborative work between Excelfore and Siemens is designed to enable eSync to bring the advantages of a true end-to-end OTA pipeline to the AUTOSAR environment, extending all the way to the edge devices in vehicles.”

The demonstration brings modern cybersecurity to the edge device, with device-specific authentication, decryption, and encryption, as a part of the OTA data pipeline. Prior solutions have generally secured the link from the cloud to the car, but not all the way to edge devices. The demonstration also shows how OTA related tasks including flashing and roll-back capability can be distributed to edge devices throughout the car. 

eSync is based on a distributed architecture with a cloud-based server, and embedded software, called eSync Agents, running on in-car ECUs. The eSync Agents are integrated with the Capital VSTAR software platform as a ‘complex driver’ on the ECU, which enables the eSync Agent to work with the crypto and bootloader functions of Capital VSTAR, so that ECUs can handle more of the work of OTA autonomously. This frees up centralized resources in the car and allows many devices to be updated in parallel, which reduces vehicle down-time during updates. 

eSync is a multi-company specification promoted by the eSync Alliance. According to the company, it can deliver and update software and firmware over the air, while collecting real-time operational data from in-car devices including ECUs, domain master ECUs, network gateways, and smart sensors. With a global network of co-operating suppliers, the eSync data pipeline helps carmakers avoid costly and inconvenient vehicle recalls and enables vehicle software and features to be updated in the field.

As well as the eSync integration, Excelfore also recently announced that it is licensing its Ethernet protocol stacks for inclusion with the Capital VSTAR software platform.

For more information, visit: https://excelfore.com/