Concept of an Ontology for Automated Vehicle Behavior in the Context of Human-Centered Research on Automated Driving Styles

Abstract

In the human-centered research on automated driving, it is common practice to describe the vehicle behavior by means of terms and definitions related to non-automated driving. However, some of these definitions are not suitable for this purpose. This paper presents an ontology for automated vehicle behavior which takes into account a large number of existing definitions and previous studies. This ontology is characterized by an applicability for various levels of automated driving and a clear conceptual distinction between characteristics of vehicle occupants, the automation system, and the conventional characteristics of a vehicle. In this context, the terms ‘driveability’, ‘driving behavior’, ‘driving experience’, and especially ‘driving style’, which are commonly associated with non-automated driving, play an important role. In order to clarify the relationships between these terms, the ontology is integrated into a driver-vehicle system. Finally, the ontology developed here is used to derive recommendations for the future design of automated driving styles and in general for further human-centered research on automated driving.

Ontology of autonomous driving based on the SAE J3016 standard

“…[29] discusses human-centered aspects of driving, introducing optional human user intervention concerning driving parameters and maneuvers within automated driving. Similarly, [14] discusses humanoriented notions related to driving, namely: driving style, driveability, driving behavior, and driving experience in the context of autonomous driving. They introduce the ontology in the form of textual definitions of the notions and diagrams.…”

“…Figure 5 illustrates the way the ontology can be used to classify parts of a motor vehicle's operation and roles an ADS or a person can have while performing them (see [18,). 14 ADS i1, being part of ADS-equipped vehicle i3, performs conditional driving automation process i2 (level 3). Person i4 participates in i2 in the role i5 of DDT fallback-ready user.…”

“…Driverless operation dispatcher role 15 [17, 3.29.4], [18, 3.31.4] is a human driver role DriverlessOperationDispatcherRole HumanUserRole (104) 14 File "individuals-autonomous-driving.ttl" at https://github.com/kul-ai/ontology-autonomous-driving/ contains the OWL modeling of the example. 15 Our ontology is missing the concept of "driverless operation dispatcher entity" characterized in [17, 3.4], [18, 3.3] as an "entity that dispatches an ADS-equipped vehicle(s) in driverless operation.".…”