Criticality Analysis for the Verification and Validation of Automated Vehicles

The process of verification and validation of automated vehicles poses a multi-faceted challenge with far-reaching societal, economical and ethical consequences. In particular, fully automated vehicles at SAE Level 4 and 5 will be expected to operate safely in an arbitrarily complex, infinite-dimensional domain called
open context
. In order to give structure to the open context, we propose a methodical
criticality analysis
that maps an infinite-dimensional domain onto a finite and manageable set of artifacts that capture and explain the emergence of critical situations for automated vehicles. We propose a combined approach of expert-based and data-driven methods to identify relevant phenomena and explain the underlying causalities. Leveraging on abstraction, we define a clearly laid out process that converges towards a manageable set of artifacts based on two assumptions on the nature of traffic. A criticality analysis precedes the design phase of an automated vehicle and is therefore located outside the V-model. As the open context is analyzed independently of a concrete realization, it is relevant for any automated vehicle operating within that domain. Therefore, its results can subsequently be used to derive safety principles and mitigation mechanisms for automated driving and to set up a coherent safety argument for the homologation process.