Improving methods and processes for the development of safety-critical automotive embedded systems

Electronic Control Units (ECUs) are implemented nowadays in safety-critical applications such as battery management or power control systems for hybrid vehicles. In this context, a critical product failure can harm people, environment or property and has therefore to be avoided. The challenge during the design of such components is to improve and guarantee the product quality while keeping flexibility for different variants and minimizing the development costs. We present in this paper first results of the newly started MEPAS project. The focus is set on improvements regarding requirements engineering as well as regarding the development of safety-relevant automotive embedded systems in the context of ISO 26262.