Safety Assurance for Automated Vehicles

With the rapid progress in functional skills of automated driving, the question of how the safety of automated vehicles can be assured increasingly becomes a key factor to the introduction of automated vehicles (AVs) for public operations in real world environments. Until now, there have been no well-defined standards or commonly accepted procedures to validate the safety of automated vehicles. In a break-out session of the Automated Vehicles Symposium 2016 (AVS), different approaches to Safety Assurance from a variety of projects preparing for the introduction of AVs were presented. The session also included presentations with follow-up discussions on the requirements of safety assurance from societal perspectives and on the feasibility of satisfying such requirements within the current or expected technological constraints. A summary and some highlights of the session are provided below.