Introduction to ADAS- Advanced Driving Assistance System

ADAS system is considered as the advancement from driver assistant system (DAS). DAS is a system that informs and warns, provides feedback on actions, increases comfort, and reduces workload by actively stabilizing or maneuvering the vehicle. ADAS system is considered as a subset of DASs, with increased use of complex processing algorithms to detect and evaluate the vehicle environment based on data collected via a variety of sensor inputs. The ADAS usage cases that require full power of real-time processing and intelligence are highlighted with full stars, whereas half-colored star marked usage cases are relatively more rudimentary ADAS cases.

Demand for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) is caused by desire to build safer vehicles and roads in order to reduce the number of road fatalities and by legislation in the leading countries. ADAS is made of the following physical sensors: radar, LIDAR, ultrasonic, photonic mixer device (PMD), cameras, and nightvision devices—that allow a vehicle to monitor near and far fields in every direction and of evolving and improving sensor fusion algorithms that ensure vehicle, driver, passenger’s, and pedestrian’s safety based on factors such as traffic, weather, dangerous conditions, etc. Modern ADAS systems act in real time via warnings to the driver or by actuation of the control systems directly and are precursors to the autonomous vehicles of the future.

There are several challenges to design, implement, deploy, and operate ADAS. The system is expected to gather accurate input, be fast in processing data, accurately predict context, and react in real time. And it is required to be robust, reliable, and have low error rates. There has been significant amount of effort and research in the industry to solve all these challenges and to develop the technology that will make ADAS and autonomous driving a reality. In addition to functional requirements, ADAS must be secured from adversaries with malicious intent whose goal is to compromise the system and cause catastrophic accidents with loss of life and damage to property. It has been shown both in academia and automotive industry that control system can be compromised via malicious attacks launched through various means, for example via DVD player, the ODB-II port,1,2 or even wirelessly via tire pressure sensors,3 as a result displaying to the driver wrong warnings3 or even causing fatality by remotely disabling braking system on a vehicle while it is moving.1,2 In addition to protecting the system from criminal actors, there is a bigger threat looming from nation-state sponsored cyber terrorism. In this whitepaper we argue that ADAS security should be considered as a fundamental non-functional requirement— together with reliability, robustness, performance, and low error rates. We analyze vulnerabilities in a conceptual ADAS architecture via representative use cases. Based on the vulnerability analysis results we state security requirements and make suggestions on countermeasures against malicious attacks. We show that ignoring ADAS security compromises other design goals.

ADAS System Background 

ADAS system provides assistance to the driver and improves driving experience. Its primary function is to ensure safety of the vehicle, the driver, and the pedestrians or bikers. ADAS could be used to save fuel costs by enabling platooning in which vehicles follow each other within close distance; it could warn when a vehicle swerves across the lane or it could apply emergency brake to avoid collision, etc. To function reliably, ADAS must be able to recognize objects, signs, road surface, and moving objects on the road and to make decisions whether to warn or act on behalf of a driver.