Cognigear
Engineering & Architecture

End-to-End Autonomy System Architecture Design

Design the full autonomy stack: perception → localization → prediction → planning → control → safety layer → teleop → data platform.

Timeline
8 Weeks to Value
Typical Engagement
$80k–$220k (detailed engineering design)
Focus Areas
Haul trucks, Forklifts, AGVs

End-to-End Autonomy System Architecture Design

Design a robust, scalable autonomy software and hardware architecture that integrates seamlessly with your industrial vehicles.

  • Define the complete data flow from sensor to actuation
  • architect for real-time performance, determinism, and safety
  • Ensure modularity to allow component upgrades without system-wide refactoring

Who this is for

Chief Architects, Systems Engineers, and Technical Leads at:

  • Robotics and Autonomy companies scaling from prototype to product
  • Industrial OEMs integrating autonomy capabilities
  • Retrofit providers needing a reference architecture

Operational context

This engagement focuses on:

  • Layers – Hardware (Compute/Sensors), OS/Middleware, Application (Perception/Planning), Safety, Cloud/Ops
  • Constraints – Power budgets, compute limitations, network bandwidth, environmental hardening
  • Integration – Interfacing with vehicle CAN bus, hydraulic controls, and existing site IT/OT

Trigger phrases you might be saying

  • “Our current code is a spaghetti mess of ROS nodes; we need a real architecture.”
  • “We’re hitting latency issues and don’t know where the bottleneck is.”
  • “How do we integrate a safety-rated PLC with our AI compute box?”
  • “We need to support multiple vehicle types with one software stack.”

Business outcomes

  • Blueprinted system architecture ready for detailed implementation
  • Reduced technical debt by defining clear interfaces and contracts between modules
  • Safety-ready design incorporating independent safety layers and redundancy
  • Scalable foundation supporting future feature additions (e.g., V2X, multi-agent coordination)

What we deliver

  • High-level system topology and data flow diagrams
  • Hardware architecture (Compute, Sensors, Networking, Power)
  • Software architecture (Modules, Interfaces, Middleware, OS)
  • Interface Control Documents (ICDs) draft for key vehicle integration points
  • Latency and bandwidth budget analysis

How it works

  1. Requirements – Gather functional and non-functional requirements (ODD, safety, performance)
  2. Draft – Develop candidate architectures and perform trade-off analysis
  3. Refine – detailed design of the selected architecture including interface definitions

Timeline & effort

  • Duration: 6-10 weeks
  • Client time: Technical workshops with hardware, software, and vehicle teams
  • Data: Vehicle electrical schematics, existing code/docs (if any), sensor specs

Pricing bands

Fixed-fee: $80k–$220k, depending on:

  • Complexity of the vehicle platform (drive-by-wire readiness)
  • Safety integrity level (SIL/PL) targets
  • Depth of documentation required

Tech stack & integrations

Device and vendor agnostic. We work with:

  • Compute: NVIDIA Jetson/Orin, Intel, ruggedized fanless PCs
  • Middleware: ROS2, Zenoh, DDS, Autosar Adaptive
  • Vehicle Interface: CAN (J1939, CANopen), Ethernet, Modbus
  • Safety: Safety PLCs (Siemens, Sick), Watchdogs

Risks & safeguards

We explicitly design for:

  • Determinism – ensuring critical control loops meet hard real-time deadlines
  • Failure handling – architectural patterns for graceful degradation (e.g., safe stop)
  • Cybersecurity – "security by design" principles in network segmentation
  • Obsolescence – abstracting hardware interfaces to allow component swaps

Site examples

  • AgTech Startup (USA) – Designed the complete architecture for an autonomous tractor retrofit, separating the safety-critical stopping system from the AI navigation stack, enabling rapid iteration on AI without compromising safety.
  • Port Automation (Asia) – Re-architected a legacy AGV system to move from centralized control to distributed on-edge intelligence, reducing network dependency and latency.

Frequently asked questions

Do you write the code? This engagement is for Design. We produce the blueprints. We can assist with implementation in follow-on engagements or guide your team.

How detailed does it get? We go down to the level of defining ROS topics/messages, compute resource allocation for processes, and electrical block diagrams.

Does this cover the cloud side too? We define the interface to the cloud (telemetry, command/control), but deep cloud backend design is usually a separate scope (see Service 11 and 16).


Target KPIs

  • System latency
  • Compute resource breakdown
  • Functional safety integrity
  • Bandwidth utilization
  • Integration cost

Deployed Environments

Complex industrial sitesMixed traffic zonesGPS-denied environments

Ready to start?

Book a 15-minute technical scoping call to discuss your fleet requirements.

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