João-Vitor Zacchi

Benjamin Herd, Jessica Kelly, Clarissa Heinemann et al.

We present a method for dynamic quantitative assurance that enhances static safety cases with continuous, runtime-driven confidence updates. The method quantifies and propagates confidence across the development lifecycle by integrating design-time evidence and windowed runtime Safety Performance Indicators (SPIs) within a single Subjective Logic (SL)-based assurance case. At runtime, SPI evidence is continuously evaluated, and targeted claims are updated using a rule that increases confidence in the absence of violations and imposes prompt penalties when violations occur. This design prioritizes safety-relevant responsiveness over exact classical Bayesian posterior updates. We demonstrate the method using a simulation-based construction zone assist function, focusing on an ML-based construction cone detection component, and show how confidence evolves as SPI evidence is observed in operation.

J. Kelly, S. Zafar, L. Heidemann et al.

In December 2023, the European Parliament provisionally agreed on the EU AI Act. This unprecedented regulatory framework for AI systems lays out guidelines to ensure the safety, legality, and trustworthiness of AI products. This paper presents a methodology for interpreting the EU AI Act requirements for high-risk AI systems by leveraging product quality models. We first propose an extended product quality model for AI systems, incorporating attributes relevant to the Act not covered by current quality models. We map the Act requirements to relevant quality attributes with the goal of refining them into measurable characteristics. We then propose a contract-based approach to derive technical requirements at the stakeholder level. This facilitates the development and assessment of AI systems that not only adhere to established quality standards, but also comply with the regulatory requirements outlined in the Act for high-risk (including safety-critical) AI systems. We demonstrate the applicability of this methodology on an exemplary automotive supply chain use case, where several stakeholders interact to achieve EU AI Act compliance.

Balahari Vignesh Balu, Florian Geissler, Francesco Carella et al.

We study the automated derivation of safety requirements in a self-driving vehicle use case, leveraging LLMs in combination with agent-based retrieval-augmented generation. Conventional approaches that utilise pre-trained LLMs to assist in safety analyses typically lack domain-specific knowledge. Existing RAG approaches address this issue, yet their performance deteriorates when handling complex queries and it becomes increasingly harder to retrieve the most relevant information. This is particularly relevant for safety-relevant applications. In this paper, we propose the use of agent-based RAG to derive safety requirements and show that the retrieved information is more relevant to the queries. We implement an agent-based approach on a document pool of automotive standards and the Apollo case study, as a representative example of an automated driving perception system. Our solution is tested on a data set of safety requirement questions and answers, extracted from the Apollo data. Evaluating a set of selected RAG metrics, we present and discuss advantages of a agent-based approach compared to default RAG methods.