Linux container solution for running Android applications on an automotive platform

An existing problem in the automotive industry is how to use Android alongside Linux operating system on a single SoC. The challenge is especially exacerbated between the driver assist applications (developed on a variant of a real-time Linux) and infotainment applications (developed on the Android). Due to the rapid surge of the automotive industry in the past years, there is already an existing solution on the market that uses system hypervisors to run two or more operating systems side by side on a single SoC. Hypervisors have resources shared between the two systems, which is a major bottleneck point for further system optimization. On the other hand, several existing open-source solutions enable Android to run on top of the Linux operating system inside a separate container, with the benefit of dynamic resource allocation. We give an overview of the current development state of container-based solutions and propose one solution for a new approach: running Android inside Linux container technology on an automotive-grade platform. Our proposed approach integrates different classes of automotive applications and enables secure inter-system communication on top of container-based technology. Our future work will expand the implementation of our current solution with additional Android features, to run more demanding Android applications in a secure Linux environment.