Redefining Safety for Autonomous Vehicles
Safecomp 2024 talk and paper on a new framework for risk and acceptable safety
I recently presented a paper at SafeComp on creating a different approach to defining safety, with a proposed new set of core definitions to be used in safety standards. Here are the paper, presentation slides, and a recorded talk video.
Abstract:
Existing definitions and associated conceptual frameworks for computer-based system safety should be revisited in light of real-world experiences from deploying autonomous vehicles. Current terminology used by industry safety standards emphasizes mitigation of risk from specifically identified hazards, and carries assumptions based on human-supervised vehicle operation. Operation without a human driver dramatically increases the scope of safety concerns, especially due to operation in an open world environment, a requirement to self-enforce operational limits, participation in an ad hoc sociotechnical system of systems, and a requirement to conform to both legal and ethical constraints. Existing standards and terminology only partially address these new challenges. We propose updated definitions for core system safety concepts that encompass these additional considerations as a starting point for evolving safe-ty approaches to address these additional safety challenges. These results might additionally inform framing safety terminology for other autonomous system applications.
SafeComp 2024 Paper: Redefining Safety for Autonomous Vehicles https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.16768
Slides: https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~koopman/lectures/L147_2024-09-SafetyDefinitions-Safecomp.pdf
Archive.org downloadable video: https://archive.org/details/l-147-safety-definitions-safecomp
YouTube Video:
Thanks Phil.
In your example of the robotaxi blocking a firehouse, it might be worthwhile noting that a human-driven car improperly parked is easily remediated by the injured entity, e.g., a verbal notification from a firefighter such as “Hey idiot, move your damn car or I’ll have it towed.”, that is not readily duplicated when interacting with a robotaxi’s computer driver.