Autonomous CPS mobility securely designed

TL;DR

This paper proposes a holistic meta-model approach for developing secure, interoperable autonomous railway interlocking systems tailored for secondary lines, addressing cost and safety challenges.

Contribution

It introduces a novel meta-model considering safety, security, interoperability, and socio-technical factors for designing autonomous railway interlocking systems for secondary lines.

Findings

Identifies gaps in existing railway automation systems.

Proposes a comprehensive meta-model for secondary line applications.

Highlights the importance of safety and security in autonomous train systems.

Abstract

In the last years the interconnection and ongoing development of physical systems combined with cyber resources has led to increasing automation. Through this progress in technology, autonomous vehicles, especially autonomous trains are getting more attention from industry and are already under test. The use of autonomous trains is known for increasing operation efficiency and reduction of personnel and infrastructure costs, which is mostly considered for main tracks. However, for less-used secondary lines, autonomous trains and their underlying sensor infrastructure are not yet considered. Thus, a system needs to be developed, which is less expensive for installation and operation of these trains and underlying infrastructure for secondary lines. Therefore, this position paper describes the process of how to derive an approach to help develop a digital interlocking system at design time for the use with secondary railway lines. In this work, we motivate the necessary research by investigating gaps in existing work as well as presenting a possible solution for this problem, a meta-model. The model considers safety, security as well as interoperability like 5G and socio-technical aspects to provide a holistic modeling approach for the development of the interlocking system for industrial secondary line use cases.