How to Address the Approval Trap for Autonomous Vehicles - A survey of the challenge on safety validation and releasing the autonomous vehicle

Autonomous vehicles will pass the technology readiness level of prototype demonstrators in an operational environment soon. Thereby the human ability to control the vehicle must be fully replaced by a technical system. Such a... [ view full abstract ]

Autonomous vehicles will pass the technology readiness level of prototype demonstrators in an operational environment soon. Thereby the human ability to control the vehicle must be fully replaced by a technical system. Such a cognitive system that perceives and processes the complex world in public traffic has never before been approved for series production. The so called “approval trap” appears which means that a ready to use developed autonomous vehicle cannot be released due to the lack of safety validation concepts. What could be the way out? Three approaches to overcome these challenge are discussed: an evolutionary approach, enabling of efficient test tools and systematical reduction of test cases. A method of decomposition of the entire automation process into functional layer corresponding to human driving skills is introduced. This decomposition opens an orthogonal way for testing machine driving efficiently.