Realtime Global Optimization of a Fail-Safe Emergency Stop Maneuver for Arbitrary Electrical / Electronical Failures in Automated Driving

TL;DR

This paper presents a real-time, globally optimal emergency stop planning algorithm for automated vehicles that remains effective despite arbitrary electrical or electronic failures, ensuring safety under complex uncertainties.

Contribution

It introduces a lightweight, real-time planning method capable of handling complex uncertainties and providing optimal emergency maneuvers without reliance on specific electronic subsystems.

Findings

The algorithm achieves global optimality at regular intervals.

It effectively manages complex environmental uncertainties.

The approach enhances fail-safe emergency stopping capabilities.

Abstract

In the event of a critical system failures in auto-mated vehicles, fail-operational or fail-safe measures provide minimum guarantees for the vehicle's performance, depending on which of its subsystems remain operational. Various such methods have been proposed which, upon failure, use different remaining sets of operational subsystems to execute maneuvers that bring the vehicle into a safe state under different environmental conditions. One particular such method proposes a fail-safe emergency stop system that requires no particular electric or electronic subsystem to be available after failure, and still provides a basic situation-dependent emergency stop maneuver. This is achieved by preemptively setting parameters to a hydraulic / mechanical system prior to failure, which after failure executes the preset maneuver "blindly". The focus of this paper is the particular challenge of implementing a lightweight planning algorithm that can cope with the complex uncertainties of the given task while still providing a globally optimal solution at regular intervals, based on the perceived and predicted environment of the automated vehicle.