Following this week's exciting Zena CSS launch for AI-defined vehicles, we wanted to share one of the ways we are enabling the future of Autonomous development. In a world where speed defines success, autonomous vehicle (AV) developers face a fundamental challenge: how to accelerate software development before hardware is ready. At Arm, we're enabling the automotive industry to move faster, validate earlier, and build more confidently usingthrough cutting-edge solutions like Scalable Open Architecture for the Embedded Edge (SOAFEE), ROS 2, and the Open AD Kit—all running on Arm Neoverse.
Our latest Automotive Arm Learning Path demonstrates how developers can set up and run a fully containerized autonomous driving simulation using the Open AD Kit on Arm Neoverse hardware. It’s not just a tutorial, it’s a blueprint for software-defined vehicle (SDV) innovation. This tutorial serves as a foundational blueprint for simulation-first SDV development using Arm Neoverse.
As cars become platforms for continuous software innovation, traditional development cycles are too slow. Defects found late cost more to fix and delay critical updates. Enter shift-left development: a strategy to test, validate, and iterate software before hardware arrives.
The Learning Path guides developers through:
All of this builds toward faster, safer, and smarter AV development.
The Scalable Open Architecture for Embedded Edge (SOAFEE) initiative brings cloud-native principles to embedded automotive development. It creates a consistent software abstraction layer that enables:
SOAFEE is not just a framework—it’s how the ecosystem moves together toward standardized, scalable software architectures.
The Open AD Kit leverages ROS 2, an open-source robotics middleware widely used in autonomous systems. ROS 2's real-time communication and modular design make it ideal for managing complex AV workloads.
The Autoware Open AD Kit, the first SOAFEE blueprint, brings ROS 2 into the automotive domain with a modular, containerized AD stack that supports perception, localization, planning, and control. It serves as both a demonstration platform and a foundation for ecosystem innovation.
Arm Neoverse provides the compute backbone needed to simulate and test AV stacks at scale. In the Learning Path, developers deploy a simulation pipeline composed of three Docker containers:
With just a few commands, you can start spin up the full environment on an Arm Neoverse server or cloud instance. This containerized setup reflects production conditions and supports continuous validation.
This isn’t just a demo—it’s a proof point of where Arm is taking the automotive industry:
By lowering barriers to entry and speeding up prototyping, Arm empowers developers to bring innovation to market faster.
Ready to build autonomous driving systems with simulation-first workflows?
Explore the Learning Path and accelerate your SDV development with Arm Neoverse, Open AD Kit, and SOAFEE. Start building your simulation-first SDV stack today with the Arm Learning Path. Learn how to deploy Open AD Kit with SOAFEE on Arm Neoverse hardware.