The engineering consultancy Atkins has been chosen to develop the cyber security model and framework for the HumanDrive Connected and Autonomous Vehicle (CAV) project. With another consultancy, SBD Automotive, Atkins will work on the vehicle’s digital security. The HumanDrive consortium has recently won a grant award from the UK Government agency Innovate UK under the CAV2 programme (for connected and autonomous vehicles).
The aim of the HumanDrive project is to build an autonomous vehicle with human-like, natural control and path planning, by 2020; capable of completing a lengthy end-to-end journey in a variety of settings, including country and A-roads and motorways. It will also be designed to mimic the style of a proficient human driver.
Keith Turner, head of cyber security development at Atkins, said: “Any autonomous vehicle is potentially vulnerable to a range of threats, including cyber tampering, denial of service attacks or information disclosure. Our work will therefore include comprehensive threat analysis, risk assessment and security requirement identification of the HumanDrive system to mitigate these. The resulting security model will encompass the HumanDrive vehicle platform, supporting infrastructure and the project as a whole. This work is a key component for the safe and successful trialling of autonomous vehicles in a full test environment before they join the road network.”
Atkins says it’ll use its multi-sector cyber resilience and intelligent mobility (iM) expertise.
