Concepts and Risk Analysis for a Cooperative and Automated Highway Platooning System

With the advent of automated cooperative systems, new challenges are raised with respect to fulfilling safety. This paper presents a novel approach in analysing and assessment of the risks for such systems. Moreover, a distributed conceptual architecture is proposed and discussed. This architecture features separated layers of concern for strategic, tactical and operational functions. We presented how the tactical layer can be allocated to either centralised or distributed versions of the architecture. An item definition, i.e. a description of the concept according to the ISO 26262 framework, for the platooning system, is presented together with a description of the operational design domain. A preliminary architecture for a functional safety concept of the item is presented. Finally, we present a risk analysis of the item according to a novel approach using a quantitative risk norm and incident classification, instead of traditional hazard analysis and risk assessment.