From Functional to Logical Scenarios: Detailing a Keyword-Based Scenario Description for Execution in a Simulation Environment

Abstract

Scenario-based development and test processes are a promising approach for verifying and validating automated driving functions. For this purpose, scenarios have to be generated during the development process in a traceable manner. In early development stages, the operating scenarios of the item to be developed are usually described in an abstract, linguistic way. Within the scope of a simulation-assisted test process, these linguistically described scenarios have to be transformed into a state space representation and converted into data formats which can be used with the respective simulation environment. Currently, this step of detailing scenarios takes a considerable manual effort. Furthermore, a standardized interpretation of the linguistically described scenarios and a consistent transformation into the data formats are not guaranteed due to multiple authors as well as many constraints between the scenario parameters. In this paper, the authors present an approach to automatically detail a keyword-based scenario description for execution in a simulation environment and provide a basis for test case generation. As a first step, the keyword-based description is transformed into a parameter space representation. At the same time, constraints regarding the selection and combination of parameter values are documented for the following process steps (e. g. evolutionary or stochastic test methods). As a second step, the parameter space representation is converted into data formats required by the simulation environment. As an example, the authors use scenarios on German freeways and convert them into the data formats OpenDRIVE (description of the road) and OpenSCENARIO (description of traffic participants and environmental conditions) for execution in the simulation environment Virtual Test Drive.

Design and Implementation of an Ontology for Semantic Labeling and Testing: Automotive Global Ontology (AGO)

“…Ontologies have become a key component for formalizing this knowledge. An event-based scenario description for testing was presented [8] based on the three abstraction levels for scenario description: functional, logical, and concrete scenarios, as described in [9] and adopted by the Pegasus project (https://www.pegasusprojekt.de/en/ accessed on 5 April 2021). The strategy was enhanced with a procedure that enabled qualitative description for the generation of more concrete scenarios.…”

Sense–Assess–eXplain (SAX): Building Trust in Autonomous Vehicles in Challenging Real-World Driving Scenarios

“…In the broader community and as exhibited in focused sessions [7], [8] we find that the works of [9]- [22] have a bearing on this research agenda. In particular, works dealing with validation and proving safety [15], [20], critical scenarios and hazardous events [10], [21], human values and comfort [11], [19], human-understandable descriptions [22], safety-oriented architectures [17], [18], and mitigating hazardous events [14] all related to our objectives.…”

Synthesizing Traffic Scenarios from Formal Specifications for Testing Automated Vehicles

“…Another representation of specifications is given by ontologies, which can also be generated automatically [16]. Highway scenario descriptions conforming with such ontologies are generated in [17] and combinatorial test generation from ontologies focusing on road infrastructure is proposed in [18].…”