Toyota's Unintended Acceleration and Software Security: A Case Study

Investigations into potential causes of Unintended Acceleration (UA) for Toyota vehicles have made news several times in the past few years. Some blame has been placed on floor mats and sticky throttle pedals. But, a jury trial verdict was based on expert opinions that defects in Toyota's Electronic Throttle Control System (ETCS) software and safety architecture caused a fatal mishap. This talk will outline key events in the still-ongoing Toyota UA litigation process, and pull together the technical issues that were discovered by NASA and other experts. The results paint a picture that should inform future designers of safety critical software in automobiles and other systems.

Bio:
Prof. Philip Koopman has served as a Plaintiff expert witness on numerous cases in Toyota Unintended Acceleration litigation, and testified in the 2013 Bookout trial. Dr. Koopman is a member of the ECE faculty at Carnegie Mellon University, where he has worked in the broad areas of wearable computers, software robustness, embedded networking, dependable embedded computer systems, and autonomous vehicle safety. Previously, he was a submarine officer in the US Navy, an embedded CPU architect for Harris Semiconductor, and an embedded system researcher at United Technologies. He is a senior member of IEEE, senior member of the ACM, and a member of IFIP WG 10.4 on Dependable Computing and Fault Tolerance. He has affiliations with the Carnegie Mellon Institute for Software Research (ISR) and the National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC).