Session Moderators

Moderator(s): 
Adrian Zlocki, Head of Automated Driving , fka GmbH  

Lutz Eckstein, Director, RWTH Aachen University

Session Organizers

Organizers:
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Adrian Zlocki, Head of Automated Driving, fka GmbH, Aachen - Germany

TRB Sponsoring Committees and Partners

TRB Standing Committee on Vehicle-Highway Automation (ACP30)

Session Description and Agenda

Description

Despite of many years of research and field demonstrations, Safety Assurance of Automated Vehicles is still the major field of action. Therefore, the global exchange and harmonization needs to be intensified in order to safely and efficiently deploy fleets of automated vehicles on public roads. This session will focus on progress and international exchange of ideas, concepts and results based on ongoing activities around the globe. It gathers relevant international experts on safety assurance and provides a platform to formulate the most urgent open questions resulting in a research agenda.

The session builds on numerous international safety assurance discussions of the past years. The main focus of this year is on the baseline for safety comparison between humans and automated vehicles. Questions on baseline estimation, different methodology approaches, comparable conditions etc. will be discussed. In addition, approaches to generate and share scenarios are going to be presented.

Agenda

1:30 PM – 1:40 PM: Introduction by Lutz Eckstein, Adrian Zlocki
 
1:40 PM – 2:00 PM: Safety Assurance Activity Status Update, moderated by Adrian Zlocki
(max. 5 min. presentation (3 slides per presentation))

• Report from Japan Safety Assurance Activities and SAKURA – Sou Kitajima, Hiroki Nakamura (JARI)

• Overview of the current portfolio of AV research issues at NHTSA – Tali Arbel-Newman (NHTSA)

• EU Projects: SUNRISE & Synergies– Jordi Pont (Idiada)

• An Overview of the Upcoming ISO TS 5083 – Francesca M. Favaró (on behalf of ISO TC22-SC32-WG13)


2:00 PM – 3:15 PM: “Safety Comparison Methodology”, moderated by Steve Shladover
(10 min. presentation + 5 min Q&A each)


• Safety Comparison between human and Waymo driver - John Scanlon (Waymo)

• Safety Assurance through the lens of Continuous Operations - Bill Geddings (Zoox)

• Data driven approach for scenario generation to support AV safety evaluation through human benchmarking- Kevin Kefauver (VTTI)

• Proposed safety case-based framework for AV safety evaluation - Jeffrey Wishart (Science Foundation Arizona)

• Driver modelling in context of safety assurance scenarios – Adrian Zlocki (fka), Lutz Eckstein (ika)

3:15 PM – 3:40 PM Break

03:40 PM – 4:50 PM: Discussion, moderated by Lutz Eckstein

Panel Person 1 – Hiroki Nakamura (JARI)
Panel Person 2 – Phil Koopman (CMU)
Panel Person 3 – Jerry Lopez (Torc Robotics)
Panel Person 5 – John Scanlon (Waymo)
 
4:50 PM – 5:00 PM: Wrap up and Outlook by Lutz Eckstein

Session Objectives

Goals:
• Provide a brief scan of the state of the art on current activities and initiatives
• Discuss the qualitative and quantitative needs and concepts to define valid references for safety assurance
• Present and exchange methodologies for scenario generation and sharing including valid references
• Foster International harmonization of approaches
• Identify further research and standardization needs

Outputs:
• Overview of international progress being made in safety assurance
• Collection of concepts to define a reference for safety of automated driving
• Identification of future needs (efforts, resources, etc.) for defining scenarios needed for safety assurance based on real-world data
• Sharing of best practices for scenario selection and sharing for safety assurance and lessons learned
• Fostering interaction among participants and speakers from industry, universities and governmental bodies
• Contribution to harmonization at the international level