helyOS: A customized off-the-shelf solution for autonomous driving applications in delimited areas

Microservice Architectures (MSA), known to successfully handle complex software systems, are emerging as the new paradigm for automotive software. The design of an MSA requires correct subdivision of the software system and implementation of the communication between components. These tasks demand both software expertise and domain knowledge. In this context, we developed an MSA framework pre-tailored to meet the requirements of autonomous driving applications in delimited areas - the helyOS framework. The framework decomposes complex applications in predefined microservice domains and provides a communication backbone for event messages and data. This paper demonstrates how such a tailored MSA framework can accelerate the development by prompting a quick start for the integration of motion planning algorithms, device controllers, vehicles simulators and webbrowser interfaces.