Towards an Ontology That Reconciles the Operational Design Domain, Scenario-based Testing, and Automated Vehicle Architectures

Mastering a specified operational design domain (ODD) and the continuous increase in automation both require comprehensive perception, prediction, and planning algorithms, thus sophisticated automated vehicle (AV) system architectures. Scenario-based testing is emerging as a promising technique attempting to efficiently run tests on all critical situations for AVs’ verification and validation. ODD, AV architectures, and scenario-based testing represent three evolving development worlds with their specific characteristics, peculiarities, and point of view, which must be consolidated and harmonized to enable a seamless design, verification, and validation process. For that reason, this paper proposes an ontology aiming at consistently reconciling the worlds of ODD, AV architectures, and scenario-based testing utilizing cross-relationships. Consequently, the ontology-based approach offers systematic guidance for an ODD definition, the design of a vehicle system architecture for automated driving, and the derivation of corresponding scenario-based test cases during the development process according to the V-model. A case study including the use case “follow lane on a motorway” for the lateral control of an active lane keeping system is exhibited, applying the introduced ontology. Therein it is also shown how the ontology-based approach enhances test efficiency and incremental development. The paper concludes by highlighting the corresponding advantages and limitations of the presented work.