Software defined vehicle

AAOS SDV supports a broad range of automotive compute domains beyond infotainment, such as instrument clusters, body controls, and driver assistance.

AAOS overview

Infotainment (IVI)

AAOS IVI delivers compelling and useful in-car entertainment and navigation experiences.

Unified Cockpit (IVI / SDV)

AAOS provides a unified cockpit solution that incorporates cluster data to create a full cabin solution for Infotainment and Cockpit.

Beyond the Cockpit (IVI / SDV)

AAOS powers multiple domains in the car like chassis and body as well as ADAS integration (QM) to create personalized experiences.

The SDV platform is engineered to address core challenges of modern vehicle development by providing a compact, performant and scalable software foundation based on a headless Android native stack, extending deep into the vehicle architecture to power software components throughout the vehicle such as the seat actuator, instrument cluster, climate control, lighting, cameras, mirrors, telemetry, and more.

AAOS SDV's core is a lightweight Android-based operating system incorporating low-level automotive specific frameworks for communications, diagnostics, software updates, and more. This enables AAOS SDV to power different vehicle controllers, like Core Compute, Body Controls, and Cluster domains.

In addition, the AAOS SDV platform includes a new framework, Display Safety, for implementing instrument cluster applications including audible chimes, regulatory camera, and sophisticated graphics that blend seamlessly with AAOS IVI content. Display Safety includes a safety design toolchain and a reference safety monitor, allowing OEMs to meet functional safety requirements leveraging the diverse platform safety mechanisms of Automotive SoCs.

Introduction to AAOS SDV

AAOS SDV is designed to run in a multi-VM environment on an automotive system on a chip (SoC), typically alongside an IVI system. AAOS SDV is a headless Android instance that leverages virtualization with VirtIO drivers. This architecture allows the same system image to run in cloud-based virtual environments (Cuttlefish) or on any VirtIO-compliant hypervisor on target hardware. AAOS SDV provides a standardized, updatable, and secure platform for vehicle functions.

AAOS environment

Figure 1. AAOS environment.

Key capabilities

The key capabilities of the AAOS SDV are described in this section.

Cloud-based development (digital twin)

AAOS SDV is designed to run on the Cuttlefish virtual device, enabling a digital twin of vehicle compute environments in the cloud or on local machines. This allows development and testing of vehicle software—from individual services to multi-VM interactions—to occur before physical hardware is available, accelerating time to market.

Key components:

  • Cuttlefish: Emulates the multi-VM SDV environment.
  • Android Studio for Platform (ASfP): Provides tooling for Rust-based service development and deployment to Cuttlefish.

Instrument cluster and mixed-criticality rendering

AAOS SDV supports use cases, such as digital instrument clusters, that require mixed-criticality rendering, which displays safety-critical information like warning lights (telltales) alongside rich graphical content. This rendering needs to be available early in the vehicle boot sequence.

Key components:

  • SDV Media: Enables graphics and media capabilities in a non-IVI VM.
  • Display Safety: Provides functionally safe, early-boot rendering paths for critical cluster information and telltales.

Automotive service integration and communication

The platform facilitates integration with existing vehicle network architectures using a service-oriented architecture (SOA). This includes inter-VM communication, service lifecycle management, and communication with services on other ECUs.

Key components:

  • SDV Core OS: Provides a headless Android instance for core services:
    • Inter-VM communication
    • Service discovery and management
    • System updates and power management
    • Integration points for diagnostics, configuration, and calibration services
  • SOME/IP broker: Enables communication between SDV services and external ECU services using scalable service-oriented middleware over IP (SOME/IP).

On-device data processing

AAOS SDV includes frameworks for on-device data collection and edge processing.

Key components:

  • SDV Telemetry: Facilitates on-device data collection and edge processing for vehicle-to-cloud services, with support for dynamic configuration.

Get started

See Get started for environment setup and usage instructions.

Resources

AAOS SDV Technical Presentations (Google Automotive Partner Bootcamp 2025)

AAOS SDV Demonstrations (Google Automotive Partner Bootcamp 2025)