ASSERTED - Assuring Safety for Rapid and Continuous Deployment for Autonomous Driving

Purpose and goal:

It became evident that achieving autonomously driving vehicles (AD) is very challenging because of safety criticality and complexity of such systems. Our research goal is to explore methods for coping better with safety of AD for rapid and continuous development and deployment. To achieve this, we need to understand how to adapt the safety argumentation of AD to this new context and what methodological and technical solutions can tackle the identified challenges at an automotive OEM’s scale.

Expected results and effects:

The results from this project will include safety concepts and new methodological approaches in order to support safety argumentation for autonomous driving systems (ADS) in the context of rapid, data-driven development and deployment cycles. The suggested concepts and methodology will be evaluated systematically. Outcomes of the project will be disseminated towards the scientific community through academic publications in relevant and renowned scientific journals and conferences. Similarly, the team has planned to actively reach out to standardization bodies like ISO.

Approach and implementation:

The project has three main technical work packages. Firstly, a systematic literature survey is conducted to identify possible methodologies and safety concepts that may be suitable for gradual functional development and deployment of safety-relevant systems. Afterwards, the potential of such concepts is systematically analyzed to select candidates for safety argumentation. Finally, we validate our findings in an industrial setting to be able to evaluate the appropriateness and generalizability.