This year’s second SDV Community Days were held on 4-5 June at IAV’s offices in Gifhorn, Germany, providing a livestream for remote participants during the conference session. The event brought together around 130 Eclipse SDV community members and enthusiasts on-site and online to explore the latest advancements and challenges in software-defined vehicles (SDVs) and open source software (OSS). Since the start of the Eclipse SDV Working Group more than three years ago, this event series has become as much a tradition as its content-rich program and fruitful discussions. The agenda included two presentations on Eclipse S-CORE and two talks on project integrations and Eclipse SDV Blueprints, reflecting the community's emerging focal points and increasing cohesion. Other areas and projects discussed included security, dataspaces, the SDV Levels, the Trustable Software Framework, and over-the-air (OTA) updates.
From AI to Quantum Computing to – Literally – Rocket Science
The first day kicked off with a warm welcome and opening remarks from Sara Gallian of the Eclipse Foundation and IAV’s Markus Blonn, setting the stage for a day of knowledge sharing. The sessions that followed delved into critical areas shaping the future of SDVs:
Lennard Rhenisch from IAV discussed how open source can safeguard security applications against emerging threats in the post-quantum era, focusing on IAV quantumSAR, a solution that integrates post-quantum cryptographic algorithms from the PQClean repository for use in automotive microcontrollers in an AUTOSAR Classic environment. He sprinkled his presentation with humorous remarks about quantum computing, keeping the community entertained throughout despite the complex topic.
Kaloyan Rusev of Elektrobit presented on AI-powered orchestration with Eclipse Ankaios leveraging Eclipse LMOS’s ARC framework, showcasing intelligent approaches to managing complex automotive systems. More specifically, he showed how Eclipse Ankaios can be controlled, monitored, and managed using a chat-based interface powered by Eclipse LMOS. From setup and health monitoring to troubleshooting and deploying updates, he demonstrated how simple natural-language prompts can streamline tasks that traditionally require manual effort. This impressive project integration had been inspired by Kai Kreuzer’s LMOS presentation at the last SDV Community Days in Rotterdam (s. interview below).
Dirk Slama from Bosch presented the digital.auto blueprint within the Eclipse SDV framework, prefacing his presentation with reflections on why the need for speed is essential in modern automotive software development, and identifying roadblocks (“the V model is not going to go away”) and remedies (Digital First, Loose Coupling) provided by the Eclipse SDV Blueprints.
Manuel Fessler (né Strobel) from VECTOR Informatik gave an update on the Eclipse Automotive API Framework, emphasising its role in decoupling app modules from lower-level middleware and thus accelerating distributed automotive applications. The new project was presented for the first time at this year’s first SDV Community Days in Rotterdam.
Jonas Horreis from Dissecto focused on automotive ethernet security, covering new protocols, attack vectors, and demonstrating how to leverage the tried-and-tested packet manipulation tool Scapy (invented as early as 2003!) for the automotive space.
Gregor Nitsche from Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR) presented on safe and secure OTA software updates for SDVs, illustrating that, as he noted, DLR is “more than rocket science,” with its research and methodologies highly applicable to the SDV domain. Gregor also announced a new project, “UP2DATE4SDV” under the umbrella of the EU’s HORIZON programme, that will start in July 2025 and run until 2028.
Falk Langer from IAV and Wilhelm Rosinski (Hochschule Mittweida) explored building a data and service mesh with Eclipse Dataspace Components (EDC) for a continuous MLOps Lifecycle.
To help navigate the growing SDV ecosystem, Andy Riexinger from Bosch concluded the day with an overview of automotive-relevant open source projects – both within the Eclipse SDV Working Group and beyond – in a talk titled 'The Automotive Collection.'
Eclipse S-CORE Updates – and a Premiere
Day 1 included two talks on Eclipse S-CORE, highlighting the project's significant progress since its announcement eight months ago and the growing momentum behind developing the components needed for the upcoming 0.5 and 1.0 releases.
Björn Reistel from ETAS and Thilo Schmitt from Mercedes-Benz Tech Innovation provided a status update on Eclipse S-CORE and an in-depth look at its architecture. Initiated by ETAS, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Qorix, and Accenture, the project is now attracting contributions from an expanding number of companies (including Continental Automotive Technologies) and individuals, Björn reported. S-CORE is currently on its way to the 0.5 release, which is expected at the end of this year and will be developed to meet full automotive-grade standards.Thilo gave an overview of the feature request and implementation process that is using the FEO (fixed execution order) framework, designed for applications supporting data-driven and time-driven applications mainly in the ADAS domain.
Thilo Schmitt returned to the stage with Tim Kliefoth (both representing Mercedes-Benz Tech Innovation) to explore vehicle diagnostics for the software-defined vehicle era, focusing on SOVD (service-oriented vehicle diagnostics) for Eclipse-SCORE. SOVD is a diagnostics framework developed to address the evolving requirements of the SDV era, such as zonal architectures and centralised HPCs – “capabilities beyond fault codes”, as Tim emphasised. They concluded their presentation with a new and separate project proposal, Eclipse OpenSOVD.
The day concluded with a networking reception, providing attendees with an opportunity to connect and discuss the day's insights.
Day 2: Interactive Sessions and Practical Applications
In keeping with the tradition of the SDV Community Days, the second day offered a more interactive and informal set-up, focusing on practical applications and collaborative problem-solving:
Eclipse SDV-LVL: Patrick Stracke from IAV led a session on Eclipse SDV-LVL. He initiated the discussion by addressing the role of hardware in the SDV context, highlighting both its function as a platform and its limitations – especially for AI applications – while proposing a new SDV Level 6 to account for hardware upgradability. The group reached a general consensus that hardware plays a critical but distinct role from software, deserving its own evolutionary path and classification, though definitions should remain flexible due to high variability and differing impacts depending on hardware type and use case, particularly in commercial vehicles.
BOF: Using the Eclipse Trustable Software Framework (TSF) on a Project: Daniel Krippner from ETAS hosted a Birds of a Feather (BOF) session on using the TSF in a project context. He has developed a GitLab-based YAML file for generating human-readable TSF metadata per release, aiming to create a reusable template framework via GitHub Actions that integrates seamlessly with Eclipse project infrastructure. The initiative, initially targeting Rust but extendable to C/C++, invites community contributions and will be coordinated with the Automotive Processes SIG, though the main development will occur in a dedicated project to be determined.
Conclusion and Further Materials
To sum up, the SDV Community Days at IAV offered a compelling mix of talks on a broad range of forward-looking, cutting-edge technologies relevant to SDVs – such as AI, quantum computing, and insights from aerospace engineering – while also highlighting emerging focal points where projects are increasingly growing and maturing, collaborating, or converging toward a core SDV stack. The event also saw a strong turnout of newcomers, reflecting the continued growth of the SDV Working Group.
Visual highlights from the event are available in the accompanying Flickr album. The talk recordings are available on the Eclipse SDV YouTube channel.
Want to Contribute to Eclipse SDV?
If you’d like to get involved in the Eclipse SDV community or any of the projects or Special Interest Groups, explore the working group’s website and ways to get engaged.
