SUNRISE coordinator Stefan de Vries presented the project at the 2023 TRB Annual Automated Road Transportation Symposium (ARTS2023). In his presentation during a Breakout session on Safety Assurance of Automated Vehicles, he discussed about the ongoing challenges and efforts in the field of Safety Assurance of Automated Vehicles (AV).
During this Breakout session, aiming to bring together experts from around the world to exchange ideas and progress related to AV safety assurance, speakers provided an overview of the current state of the art in safety assurance activities and initiatives worldwide and discussed qualitative and quantitative scenario requirements. The session was organised by Dr. Adrian Zlocki, Director of Automated Driving fka GmbH in Aachen, Germany, and Dr. Lutz Eckstein, Director and Chair at the Institute of Automotive Engineering (ika), RWTH Aachen University, Germany. Panelists were Henning Mosebach (DLR), Hiroki Nakamura (Jari), Alrik Svenson (NHTSA), Ed Straub (AVSC).
Despite years of research, ensuring safe and efficient introduction of automated driving on public roads remains an area of action, discussion, and international harmonisation. Fostering international harmonisation of approaches in safety assurance is required to identify further research and standardisation needs. The session specifically focused on the methodology for defining the minimum number and types of scenarios required for safety assurance of an Automated Driving System (ADS) based on its Operational Design Domain (ODD) and numerical safety target.
Some of the questions posed at the event, concerned inquiries on what a scenario database should cover, addressing aspects like challenges caused by other road users, automated vehicle faults, and driver/passenger behaviour.
Another topic of relevance for the SUNRISE project was the question on how scenarios should be exchanged or shared, taking into account intellectual property, economic, and legal concerns while balancing broader societal benefits of efficiency and establishing a common baseline for safety assurance. SUNRISE will play an important role as a facilitator of networking for the scientific community, technology developers, and vehicle safety bodies like UNECE, SAE, ISO and ASAM. The collaboration and connections with different international partners will be key for success.
Mr de Vries says, “The TRB ARTS2023 conference has been a fantastic event on AV’s in general, and their safety assurance in specific. Not only through inspiring sessions with vivid discussions between leading experts, but also on the streets of San Francisco, where conference delegates were able to take a ride on fully autonomous vehicles (from Cruise and Waymo), integrated into normal traffic and without safety drivers. A lot can be learned from the knowledge and experience that various US-based players are conducting in the field of safety assurance. First connections were established for collaboration between US-based initiatives on AV safety assurance, and the existing alliance formed by the SUNRISE, V&V Methods and SAKURA projects.”