Safety Oriented State Transitions in Level 3 Automated Driving Systems: A General Framework

On the road to fully autonomous driving, the level 3 (L3) automated driving systems (ADS) appears to be a more realistic choice. However, this is also a difficult problem in that the ADS and the driver are convoluted together, making control of the system difficult. Another is the safety and responsibility partition concerns, hindering commercialization of the system. Under this circtunstance, the research conducted in this paper aims to establish a safety oriented state transition framework for the L3 ADS, utilizing an event based dynamic hazard and risk assessment (DHAKA) framework. In doing so, the system would be able to maintain a state of acceptable risk or loss even facing unexpectable changes. More importantly, the reason would be traceable when certain accident happens, and the responsibility partition would be unambiguous under this architecture.