J. Ploeg

J. Ploeg, E. de Gelder, M. Slavík et al.

Automated vehicles (AVs) are expected to increase traffic safety and traffic efficiency, among others by enabling flexible mobility-on-demand systems. This is particularly important in Singapore, being one of the world's most densely populated countries, which is why the Singaporean authorities are currently actively facilitating the deployment of AVs. As a consequence, however, the need arises for a formal AV road approval procedure. To this end, a safety assessment framework is proposed, which combines aspects of the standardized functional safety design methodology with a traffic scenario-based approach. The latter involves using driving data to extract AV-relevant traffic scenarios. The underlying approach is based on decomposition of scenarios into elementary events, subsequent scenario parametrization, and sampling of the estimated probability density functions of the scenario parameters to create test scenarios. The resulting test scenarios are subsequently employed for virtual testing in a simulation environment and physical testing on a proving ground and in real life. As a result, the proposed assessment pipeline thus provides statistically relevant and quantitative measures for the AV performance in a relatively short time frame due to the simulation-based approach. Ultimately, the proposed methodology provides authorities with a formal road approval procedure for AVs. In particular, the proposed methodology will support the Singaporean Land Transport Authority for road approval of AVs.

E. de Gelder, J. -P. Paardekooper, A. Khabbaz Saberi et al.

The development of new assessment methods for the performance of automated vehicles is essential to enable the deployment of automated driving technologies, due to the complex operational domain of automated vehicles. One contributing method is scenario-based assessment in which test cases are derived from real-world road traffic scenarios obtained from driving data. Given the complexity of the reality that is being modeled in these scenarios, it is a challenge to define a structure for capturing these scenarios. An intensional definition that provides a set of characteristics that are deemed to be both necessary and sufficient to qualify as a scenario assures that the scenarios constructed are both complete and intercomparable. In this article, we develop a comprehensive and operable definition of the notion of scenario while considering existing definitions in the literature. This is achieved by proposing an object-oriented framework in which scenarios and their building blocks are defined as classes of objects having attributes, methods, and relationships with other objects. The object-oriented approach promotes clarity, modularity, reusability, and encapsulation of the objects. We provide definitions and justifications of each of the terms. Furthermore, the framework is used to translate the terms in a coding language that is publicly available.