Core Concepts
Autonomous vehicles require robust safety assurance to overcome the challenges of complex situations and unreliable perception, which traditional approaches often fail to address. Integrating dynamic risk management into behavior-based systems can provide a promising solution.
Abstract
The content discusses the challenges of ensuring the safety of autonomous vehicles, particularly in complex situations and with unreliable perception. It highlights the limitations of traditional safety engineering approaches, which often lead to underperformance due to conservative safety assumptions.
The paper introduces the concept of dynamic risk management, which considers the broader context and situational awareness for more granular decision-making. It also discusses the potential of behavior-based robotics, which can provide a modular and adaptive framework for control and perception.
The key insights are:
- Proving the safety of autonomous vehicles is an essential but open challenge, as the overall complexity of situations and the limited reliability of perception systems pose significant hurdles.
- Traditional safety engineering approaches, such as functional safety standards, are necessary but insufficient to ensure the overall safety of autonomous vehicles, as they often rely on conservative assumptions and cannot handle the dynamic nature of real-world situations.
- Incorporating dynamic risk management into behavior-based systems can be a promising approach to overcome the limitations of traditional methods, as it allows for more sophisticated decision-making that considers the broader context and situational awareness.
- The integration of dynamic risk management and behavior-based robotics remains an open challenge, but initial attempts have shown promising results.