Atkins to develop cyber security for HumanDrive CAV
Above: Atkins' Bristol hub.
Supported by consultancy SBD Automotive, Atkins’ work will ensure that the vehicle is digitally secure, resulting in a safer driving experience.
The HumanDrive consortium has recently won a grant award from Innovate UK under the CAV2 programme.
The objective of the HumanDrive project is to build an autonomous vehicle with human-like, natural control and path planning, by 2020. It will be fully autonomous and capable of completing a lengthy end-to-end journey in a variety of settings, including country roads, A-roads and motorways. It will also be designed to mimic the style of a proficient human driver, to provide an enhanced experience for the occupants.
Keith Turner, head of cyber security development at Atkins, explained: “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.”
This project leverages Atkins’ multi sector cyber resilience and intelligent mobility (iM) expertise to help further the UK's ambition to be a global leader for the introduction of Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs) onto mainstream transport and infrastructure. This will bring passenger and driver benefits such as improvements to time, safety and cost of ownership.
