Causality-aware Safety Testing for Autonomous Driving Systems

TL;DR

This paper introduces Causal-Fuzzer, a causality-aware testing method for autonomous driving systems that models interrelationships among diverse scenarios to improve violation detection and testing coverage.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel causality-based fuzzing approach that constructs a causal graph to guide scenario generation and prioritizes impactful mutations, enhancing testing effectiveness.

Findings

Outperforms existing methods in violation detection

Provides better coverage of causal relationships

Detects critical scenarios more efficiently

Abstract

Simulation-based testing is essential for evaluating the safety of Autonomous Driving Systems (ADSs). Comprehensive evaluation requires testing across diverse scenarios that can trigger various types of violations under different conditions. While existing methods typically focus on individual diversity metrics, such as input scenarios, ADS-generated motion commands, and system violations, they often fail to capture the complex interrelationships among these elements. This oversight leads to gaps in testing coverage, potentially missing critical issues in the ADS under evaluation. However, quantifying these interrelationships presents a significant challenge. In this paper, we propose a novel causality-aware fuzzing technique, Causal-Fuzzer, to enable efficient and comprehensive testing of ADSs by exploring causally diverse scenarios. The core of Causal-Fuzzer is constructing a causal graph to model the interrelationships among the diversities of input scenarios, ADS motion commands, and system violations. Then the causal graph will guide the process of critical scenario generation. Specifically, Causal-Fuzzer proposes (1) a causality-based feedback mechanism that quantifies the combined diversity of test scenarios by assessing whether they activate new causal relationships, and (2) a causality-driven mutation strategy that prioritizes mutations on input scenario elements with higher causal impact on ego action changes and violation occurrence, rather than treating all elements equally. We evaluated Causal-Fuzzer on an industry-grade ADS Apollo, with a high-fidelity. Our empirical results demonstrate that Causal-Fuzzer significantly outperforms existing methods in (1) identifying a greater diversity of violations, (2) providing enhanced testing sufficiency with improved coverage of causal relationships, and (3) achieving greater efficiency in detecting the first critical scenarios.