Improving automotive embedded systems engineering at European level

Complexity in embedded systems engineering is increasing, imposing challenges to many industries. Especially the automotive industry has gone through significant changes with the application target of embedded systems moving towards safety-relevant applications. New safety standards as well as an increasing number of functionalities in a context of stringent cost constraints represent a complex challenge the industry is dealing with. In this paper, we provide an overview of two major challenges, the automotive industry is facing and of the main European research projects - with an emphasis to CESAR - focused on solving these challenges with respect to embedded systems engineering. We further discuss the reference technology platform as concept for tool integration and interoperability standard in order to significantly reduce costs. Finally, an exemplary realization of such reference technology platform for the automotive domain is presented.