Framework reconstructs mixed AUTOSAR and ROS 2 vehicle system traces
BA-TRACE: Boundary-Aware Trace Reconstruction for Scenario-Based Evaluation of Mixed AUTOSAR Adaptive and ROS 2 Vehicular Embedded Systems
Software Engineering
Summary
Modern vehicles use different software platforms that speak different languages, making it hard to follow how information moves through them during tests. The authors introduce BA-TRACE, a framework that pieces together traces from mixed vehicle software platforms to show the complete path of execution across system boundaries. Their tool helps reveal timing delays at the boundaries where different systems connect but does not guarantee the system is correct or safe. They demonstrated BA-TRACE with a driving scenario involving object detection and braking in a simulation.
What this means in practice
- •For vehicular embedded systems developers: Analyze mixed AUTOSAR and ROS 2 system traces to identify cross-platform execution paths and latency in scenario tests.
- •For industrial automation engineers: Diagnose integration issues by reconstructing execution flows across heterogeneous middleware boundaries in robotic or factory automation systems.
Authors
Shunsuke Ito, Ryudai Iwakami, Hiroyuki Hanyu, Tasuku Ishigooka, Takuya Azumi
Abstract
Modern vehicular embedded systems increasingly combine ROS 2-based autonomous-driving stacks with AUTOSAR Adaptive Platform (AUTOSAR AP). Such mixed stacks make scenario-based evaluation hard to interpret because execution paths cross DDS-SOME/IP middleware boundaries between ROS 2 and AUTOSAR AP. Existing simulators and tracing tools execute scenarios or collect platform-local traces but cannot reconstruct cross-domain data flows. This paper presents BA-TRACE, a boundary-aware trace reconstruction framework for scenario-based evaluation of mixed AUTOSAR AP and ROS 2 vehicular embedded systems. BA-TRACE combines ROS 2 trace events, AUTOSAR ara::log events, ARXML-derived structural dependencies, and bridge-level instrumentation to reconstruct an end-to-end execution graph across the DDS-SOME/IP boundary. A case study with an AWSIM/OpenSCENARIO-based object-detection and braking scenario shows that BA-TRACE reconstructs the expected cross-platform path and exposes boundary-specific latency such as point-cloud transfer overhead. The reconstructed topology is used as evidence of traceability, not as proof of behavioral correctness or safety.