This work presents a study to improve the safety of experimental autonomous vehicles in the Heudiasyc laboratory. This work presents risk analyses showing that the use of our vehicles involves significant risks during experiments, and that integrating an Independent Safety Component called Safety-Bag in the vehicle architecture can significantly reduce these risks. The Safety-Bag carries out the on-line verification of safety necessities by checking the vehicle's current state with safety rules and taking or disabling actions to ensure a safe behavior. In our work, we present and we apply two methods for risk analysis (FMEA and HazOp-UML) to design these safety necessities in the case of experimental autonomous vehicles. We also present the validation of two safety necessities through fault injection experiments with a robotized Fluence vehicle and a vehicle in the loop testbed.

This paper gives a closer look to the subject of the conversion of a conventional metro line into a fully automated operation without interrupting or disturbing the service. In the introduction, we present the Line 1 Automation project as one of the principal aspects of Paris metro's network modernization plan announced by the Régie Autonome des Transports Parisiens (RATP). Next we give an overview of the present line 1 and illustrate the decision key elements for choosing it as a target of a fully automatic operation. The following section describes the development of the line 1 model and shows the results made so far. Finally, we expose the conclusions of the present work and the outlooks of the line 1 automation project.

Preliminary risk analysis (PRA) is a methodology used in critical systems safety studies. It is primarily used at the preliminary stage of the system's design so as to determine the scenarios of potential accidents, to evaluate their probabilities of occurrence (frequency) as well as the severity of the resulting consequences and to propose solutions (preventive and/or mitigative safeguards) in order to reduce the risk level in terms of severity/occurrence (to reduce the frequency of the contributors or reduce the severity of the accident). The preliminary risk analysis was largely used in several industrial fields (aeronautics, weapons systems, chemistry, railway...) in order to study the safety of the systems. From one field to another, from one expert to another, many extremely different approaches and methods are used to carry out this analysis. Moreover, the formats representing the results of the PRA are often varied as well as the terminology and the concepts related to the PRA. The main goal of this paper, completed within the framework of project ANR-PREDIT-SECUGUIDE 1 , is to propose a PRA method and to determine standard contents of PRA to be used in the context of the railway systems.

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