Wind River and Baidu are working together on a self driving car. The Californian embedded software specialist and Chinese internet giant have developed a joint proof of concept to include Wind River’s AUTOSAR Adaptive–based software architecture integrated with Baidu’s Apollo autonomous driving open platform. The proof of concept is designed to meet the specific challenges of the next generation of software-defined automobiles.

According to Wind River, the proof of concept supports heterogeneous systems with mixed criticality of safety requirements. Open source software, such as non-safety critical applications (infotainment, for example), can run on Wind River Linux, while a commercial RTOS such as VxWorks support safety-critical applications that require deterministic performance. Using a software architecture that can house both safety-critical and non–safety-critical applications on the same piece of hardware, car-makers can achieve significant savings on bill of materials costs and power consumption in the vehicle.

“The complex and varied challenges that come with autonomous driving, coupled with vastly different perspectives across car-makers, make for a difficult road to mass production. A strong push toward standards can help advance the entire industry,” said Brenda Herold, vice president of Market Segment Teams at Wind River. “We look forward to working with innovators such as Baidu in an effort to speed the development, testing, and deployment of autonomous vehicles across the industry.”

“Standards are needed in order for the industry to make significant steps forward. A secure and reliable open platform can assist companies in more rapidly creating autonomous systems as well as helping technologies across the ecosystem be more inter-operable,” said Jingao Wang, head of Apollo Platform and executive director at Baidu. “We’re excited to work with a software leader like Wind River to address many of the challenging needs of an autonomous vehicle system.”