Dynamic Heterogeneous Redundancy-Based Joint Safety and Security for Connected Automated Vehicles: Preliminary Simulation and Field Test Results

For connected automated vehicles (CAVs), safety and security are two interrelated critical issues since many in-vehicle components are both safety critical and security critical. To achieve both safety and security in the presence of functional failures or cyberattacks, this article proposes a dynamic heterogeneous redundancy (DHR) scheme for CAVs. The basic idea is that each safety- and security-critical in-vehicle component should employ a DHR architecture, which is constructed by multiple heterogeneous executors with the same function. With redundancy, the functional safety can be achieved when one executor fails. Meanwhile, based on the principle that the probability is extremely low that two or more heterogeneous executors with the same function will fail for the same vulnerability, security can be ensured by using simple consensus mechanisms to detect abnormal executors caused by any cyberattacks. A DHR prototype has been designed and installed on an automated bus. Test results show that the proposed DHR is effective in enhancing both safety and security for CAVs.