RTI accelerates Autonomous Driving

Autonomous car design must seamlessly integrate multiple vendors, support compliance with evolving standards and enable continuous feature and performance improvements. RTI Connext DDS from Real-Time Innovations (RTI) accelerates development of robust autonomous driving systems and gives developers an efficient path from prototyping to production and safety certification.

RTI Connext DDS provides core connectivity to autonomous driving applications as well as other safety-critical applications across many industries. A fully autonomous car is essentially a self-driving robot with some of the most demanding safety requirements in any industry. The Data Distribution Service (DDS) standard, implemented in the RTI Connext DDS product, has its roots in autonomous robotics. Connext DDS is the only middleware technology to deliver microsecond latency, safety certification, fine-grained security and proven operational readiness. It can be found at the core of unmanned air systems as well as Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and autonomy platforms of leading car manufacturers.

Data-centric connectivity is a relatively new concept in distributed systems design. It excels at simplifying complex integration and communication between individual robotic components. Similar to a database, data-centric connectivity uses a well-defined data model as a shared interface for interaction between different components. Data-centric systems can be designed to detect and manage data model changes and adapt to these changes at runtime.

This makes a data-centric connectivity approach very effective in any application with self-learning and/or self-remediation requirements, such as autonomous driving. In large projects, data centricity also helps minimize application interdependencies to enable parallel component development and rapid integration. Unlike a message-centric model, a data-centric model encapsulates the functionality of data connectivity. It handles most of the functions that a message-centric model requires in an application, greatly reducing the application’s complexity.

RTI Connext DDS addresses many critical requirements of ADAS and Autonomous Driving applications:

• Quality of Service – guaranteed latency and control over data flow and network bandwidth.
• Decoupling – middleware handles communication details, allowing applications to focus on the processing of data.
• Common data model – applications and systems share data using a common and well-defined data model across all components.
• Data-centric architecture – decoupling integration logic from system components with a data-centric architecture simplifies collaboration of global teams and suppliers.
• Scalability – Connext DDS can be efficiently used for many thousands of applications with hundreds of development teams worldwide.
• Real-world experience – Connext DDS has been developed with years of experience supporting customers with demanding industrial applications.