Testing predictive automated driving systems: lessons learned and future recommendations

TL;DR

This paper evaluates current physical testing methods for predictive automated driving systems, highlighting limitations and proposing future recommendations based on practical testing experiences within the BRAVE project.

Contribution

It provides an analysis of physical testing limitations for predictive driving functions and offers practical recommendations for improving testing procedures.

Findings

Current physical tests struggle with evaluating predictive systems in critical scenarios.

Predictive systems require new testing approaches to assess anticipation capabilities.

Recommendations aim to enhance safety validation for autonomous driving functions.

Abstract

Conventional vehicles are certified through classical approaches, where different physical certification tests are set up on test tracks to assess required safety levels. These approaches are well suited for vehicles with limited complexity and limited interactions with other entities as last-second resources. However, these approaches do not allow to evaluate safety with real behaviors for critical and edge cases, nor to evaluate the ability to anticipate them in the mid or long term. This is particularly relevant for automated and autonomous driving functions that make use of advanced predictive systems to anticipate future actions and motions to be considered in the path planning layer. In this paper, we present and analyze the results of physical tests on proving grounds of several predictive systems in automated driving functions developed within the framework of the BRAVE project. Based on our experience in testing predictive automated driving functions, we identify the main limitations of current physical testing approaches when dealing with predictive systems, analyze the main challenges ahead, and provide a set of practical actions and recommendations to consider in future physical testing procedures for automated and autonomous driving functions.