Introduction to ISO 26262:2018
ISO 26262:2018, “Road vehicles — Functional safety,” is a series of international functional-safety standards for the automotive industry. It adapts the IEC 61508 series of standards [6] to the functional safety of electrical and/or electronic systems within road vehicles. The first edition of ISO 26262 was published in 2011. The second edition, published in 2018, completely supersedes the previous versions, incorporates a general restructuring of all parts for improved clarity, and contains numerous changes, updates and extensions, among which:
- requirements for motorcycles, trucks, buses, trailers and semi-trailers;
- extension of the vocabulary;
- more detailed objectives and objective oriented confirmation measures;
- management of safety anomalies;
- references to cybersecurity;
- guidance on model based development and software safety analysis;
- guidance on fault tolerance, safety-related special characteristics and software tools.
ISO 26262 provides guidance for the production of all software embedded into automotive systems and equipment, whether or not they are safety critical. ISO 26262 approach to risk management is based on the determination of the Automotive Safety Integrity Level (ASIL) for each safety function assigned to each subsystem. There are four ASILs: A, B, C and D, with A being the lowest safety integrity level and D being the highest. ASIL D represents likely potential for severely life-threatening or fatal injury in the event of a malfunction and requires the highest level of assurance that the dependent safety goals are sufficient and have been achieved.
Role of ECLAIR in Ensuring Compliance with ISO 26262:2018
The ECLAIR Software Verification Platform can be used to comply with several of the objectives of ISO 26262:2018 Part 6 “Product development at the software level” and Part 9 “Automotive safety integrity level (ASIL)-oriented and safety-oriented analyses”. In addition, the ECLAIR Fusa Pack, the ECLAIR Qualification Kits, and the ECLAIR Qualification Service, greatly simplify compliance with the prescription of Section 11 “Confidence in the use of software tools” of ISO 26262:2018 Part 8 “Supporting processes” .