Using Monitoring of Maritime Traffic Scenarios in the Validation of Maritime Systems

Highly automated and autonomous maritime assistance systems are safety-critical systems meant to operate in the complex domain of maritime traffic. This makes verification and validation quite challenging, while necessary to ensure safety and reach certification. Scenario-based testing is a promising approach. Here, correct test conduction as well as functional behaviour requirements can be described as traffic scenarios. Formal specification of these traffic scenarios and automatic monitoring of tests with respect to this specification can support efficient and objective conduction and evaluation of scenario-based tests.We present a concept for scenario monitoring in testing, based on the formalisation of test scenarios and requirements using maritime Traffic Sequence Charts. To show feasibility of this concept, we demonstrate the successful application of a prototypical implementation of a monitor for a carefully chosen test scenario to multiple simulation-based and physical tests.