Towards a Software Defined Truck

Heavy vehicles are part of the US Critical Infrastructure as they provide the means to deliver goods across the globe. To effectively manage the delivery of goods and improve the performance of the logistics operations, heavy vehicles have been increasingly equipped with wireless telematics systems that bridge the on‐board vehicle networks with Internet based systems. The interconnection of these systems creates a complex system comprising both traditional information technology (IT) systems and automotive operational technology (OT) systems. Using a systems approach to the design, testing, and implementation of complex logistic systems requires a testing and verification strategy to encompass many configurations of vehicles. Using existing vehicles for comprehensive testing is cost prohibitive and building representative testbeds for each configuration of the vehicle is labor intensive. However, testing numerous configurations of heavy vehicles remains a necessity for proper systems evaluation and verification. To this end, a software defined truck (SDT) system is proposed to rapidly test numerous vehicle configurations and achieve testing and verification tasks using automated techniques. This approach drastically expands the coverage of the testing and verification of technologies that leverage vehicle networks. The approach sets the requirements of the software defined truck, explains the advantages of using switched packet networking to virtually reconfigure the truck's network topology, and the appropriate use of simulation engines, emulated hardware, and actual hardware. The result is a scalable, sharable resource where organizations can conduct research, testing, and evaluation at significantly lower cost and wider coverage. This is particularly useful for performing cybersecurity testing, compliance testing, or evaluating other software driven solutions that use the vehicle's controller area network (CAN).