DAVOS: An Autonomous Vehicle Operating System in the Vehicle Computing Era

TL;DR

DAVOS is a unified vehicle operating system designed to support real-time autonomous driving and extensible data services, addressing fragmentation in existing systems and enhancing safety, security, efficiency, and extensibility.

Contribution

The paper introduces DAVOS, a comprehensive vehicle OS architecture that unifies safety-critical autonomy and data-centric applications within a single framework.

Findings

Supports both real-time autonomy and data services

Addresses fragmentation in existing vehicle OSes

Enhances safety, security, efficiency, and extensibility

Abstract

Vehicle computing represents a fundamental shift in how autonomous vehicles are designed and deployed, transforming them from isolated transportation systems into mobile computing platforms that support both safety-critical, real-time driving and data-centric services. In this setting, vehicles simultaneously support real-time driving pipelines and a growing set of data-driven applications, placing increased responsibility on the vehicle operating system to coordinate computation, data movement, storage, and access. These demands highlight recurring system considerations related to predictable execution, data and execution protection, efficient handling of high-rate sensor data, and long-term system evolvability, commonly summarized as Safety, Security, Efficiency, and Extensibility (SSEE). Existing vehicle operating systems and runtimes address these concerns in isolation, resulting in fragmented software stacks that limit coordination between autonomy workloads and vehicle data services. This paper presents DAVOS, the Dependable Autonomous Vehicle Operating System, a unified vehicle operating system architecture designed for the vehicle computing context. DAVOS provides a cohesive operating system foundation that supports both real-time autonomy and extensible vehicle computing within a single system framework.