Dynamic Safety Certification for Collaborative Embedded Systems at Runtime

Abstract

Traditionally, integration and quality assurance of embedded systems are done entirely at development time. Moreover, since such systems often perform safety-critical tasks and work in human environments, safety analyses are performed and safety argumentations devised to convince certification authorities of their safety and to certify the systems if necessary. Collaborative embedded systems, however, are designed to integrate and collaborate with other systems dynamically at runtime. A complete prediction and analysis of all relevant properties during the design phase is usually not possible, as many influencing factors are not yet known. This makes the application of traditional safety analysis and certification techniques impractical, as they usually require a complete specification of the system and its context in advance. In the following chapter, we introduce new techniques to meet this challenge and outline a safety certification concept specifically tailored to collaborative embedded systems.