In the development of Level 4 automated driving functions, very specific, but diverse, requirements with respect to the operational design domain have to be considered. In order to accelerate this development, it is advantageous to combine dedicated state-of-the-art software components, as building blocks in modular automated driving function architectures, instead of developing special solutions from scratch. However, e.g., in local motion planning and control, the combination of components is still limited in practice, due to necessary interface alignments, which might yield sub-optimal solutions and additional development overhead. The application of generic interfaces, which manage the data transfer between the software components, has the potential to avoid these drawbacks and hence, to further boost this development approach. This publication contributes such a generic interface concept between the local path planning and path tracking systems. The crucial point is a generalization of the lateral tracking error computation, based on an introduced error classification. It substantiates the integration of an internal reference path representation into the interface, to resolve the component interdependencies. The resulting, proposed interface enables arbitrary combinations of components from a comprehensive set of state-of-the-art path planning and tracking algorithms. Two interface implementations are finally applied in an exemplary automated driving function assembly task.

Virtual testing using simulation will play a significant role in future safety validation procedures for automated driving systems, as it provides the needed scalability for executing a scenario-based assessment approach. This article combines multiple essential aspects that are necessary for the virtual validation of such systems. First, a general framework that contains the vital subsystems needed for virtual validation is introduced. Secondly, the interfaces between the subsystems are explored. Additionally, the concept of model fidelities is presented and extended towards all relevant subsystems. For an automated lane-keeping system with two different definitions of an operational design domain, all relevant subsystems are defined and integrated into an overall simulation framework. The resulting difference between both operational design domains is the occurrence of lateral manoeuvres, leading to greater demands of the fidelity of the vehicle dynamics model. The simulation results support the initial assumption that by extending the operation domain, the requirements for all subsystems are subject to adaption. As an essential aspect of harmonising virtual validation frameworks, the article identifies four separate layers and their corresponding parameters. In particular, the tool-specific co-simulation capability layer is critical, as it enables model exchange through consistently defined interfaces and reduces the integration effort. The introduction of this layered architecture for virtual validation frameworks enables further cross-domain collaboration.

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