The Role of Situation Awareness in Assuring Safety of Autonomous Vehicles

Abstract. We present a novel approach for reducing manual effort when testing autonomous robot control algorithms. We use procedural content generation, as developed for the film and video game industries, to create a diverse range of test situations. We execute these in the Player/Stage robot simulator and automatically rate them for their safety significance using an event-based scoring system. Situations exhibiting dangerous behaviour will score highly, and are thus flagged for the attention of a safety engineer. This process removes the time-consuming tasks of hand-crafting and monitoring situations while testing an autonomous robot control algorithm. We present a case study of the proposed approach -we generated 500 randomised situations, and our prototype tool simulated and rated them. We have analysed the three highest rated situations in depth, and this analysis revealed weaknesses in the smoothed nearnessdiagram control algorithm.

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“…Wardziński [18]). These are orthogonal to the design-time analysis described in this paper; both are necessary for safe AR.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Testing Autonomous Robot Control Software Using Procedural Content Generation

Arnold

Alexander

2013

Lecture Notes in Computer Science

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“…If a robot is demanded to perform complex tasks, and this requires a deeper understanding of situations, it is very probable that on the system's understanding may not result evidence about the present situation, as rather the system beliefs what it looks like, and when it is detected (Wardziński, 2006). In consequence the system becomes cognitive autonomous, and autonomous from stimuli, because the stimuli are fused and integrated to interpretations, the system does not sense its environment, it rather interprets the input data based on its current state of knowledge and intention (Söffker, 2008), which in turn is based on its ontogeny, and its goals.…”

Section: Summarizing Annotationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A system that has situation awareness is often described as a system that knows "what is going around" (Wardziński, 2006). Wardziński refers to the well-established definition of situation awareness of Endsley: Situation awareness is "the perception of the elements in the environment within a volume of time and space, the comprehension of their meaning and the projection of their status in the near future" (Endsley, 1995).…”

Section: Safety For the System Situation Awarenessmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A systematic procedure is required for generating the safety knowledge base, which denotes the first contribution of the work at hand. Wardziński (2006) argues that the dynamic risk assessment is a part of the system's situation assessment. Situation assessment is required to generate and maintain situation awareness.…”

Section: Observationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the work of Wardziński (2006), situation awareness is mentioned as an important requirement to address safety for autonomous vehicles, or more specifically to enable the dynamic risk assessment approach. A system that has situation awareness is often described as a system that knows "what is going around" (Wardziński, 2006).…”

Section: Safety For the System Situation Awarenessmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Safety of Autonomous Cognitive-oriented Robots

Ertle¹

2015

Künstl Intell

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Service robots shall very soon autonomously provide services in all spheres of life. They have to execute demanding and complex tasks in a dynamic environment, collaborate with human users in a natural and intuitive way and adapt themselves to varying conditions. It can be assumed that complex robots have to be able to learn, if they shall be able to provide complex tasks in unstructured environments in an autonomous fashion. The capability to 'act autonomously' is often mentioned in conjunction with robots, however, the perception and understanding of the term autonomy varies among the different research fields. Therefore, a closer look is taken at robot autonomy and intelligence, in particular, with regard to current and future robots. From this perspective, implications for safety are derived concerning safe autonomous behavior.In order to push forward the robot safety in the light of safe behavior in complex environments, a novel classification of robot hazards is provided. Based on this, the so-called object interaction hazards are derived which arise when objects that are, for instance, located in the near environment, interact with objects that are manipulated by a robot. Taking into account the current state-of-the-art, it can be stated that this denotes a novel problem area. This problem area is so far addressed neither in current research work, nor in the relevant standards.The new type of hazards can be assigned to a group of hazards that originate from the interaction with a complex and unstructured environment. In order to sufficiently consider the environment and operation context, the robot has to be aware of it. In the field of cognitive (technical and biological) systems, this key capability can be called 'situation awareness ' (cf. Söffker, 2008). Based on Endsley (1995)'s definition of situation awareness, Wardziński (2008) proposes the 'dynamic risk assessment' approach, which shall enable the robot perceive the risk of current and upcoming situations. In order to realize such a risk-aware planning system for the first time, dynamic risk assessment is integrated within a cognitive architecture in order to utilize cognitive functions, such as anticipation, planning and learning. Here, the so-called action spaces (sets of possible upcoming situations) are dynamically anticipated within the underlying cognitive architecture, and a risk assessment component assesses them with regard to comprised risks. Thus, the generated risk information can be utilized for a risk-aware action planning. The proper operation of this integrating concept is demonstrated via simulations and with a robot experiment.In order to consider (object interaction) hazards by means of dynamic risk assessment, (initial) knowledge about hazards is required. Thus, a novel procedural model is developed for systematically generating a safety knowledge base. In this connection, the concept is to formalize risk models (risk description rules) in a generalized manner so that they remain valid for future, and so far unknown si...

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AWARE: A Situational Awareness Framework for Facilitating Adaptive Behavior of Autonomous Vehicles in Manufacturing

Asmar

Chelly

Azzi

et al. 2020

Lecture Notes in Computer Science

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In this paper, we introduce Aware, a knowledge-enabled framework for robots' situational awareness. It is designed to support autonomous logistics vehicles operating in automobile manufacturing plants. Aware comprises an ontology grounding robots' observations, a knowledge reasoner, and a set of behavioral rules: The Aware ontology models data streams of proprioceptive and exteroceptive sensors into high-level semantic representations. The knowledge reasoner infers adequate policy by reasoning over a sliding window of observations, presumably depicting the robot's perceptions and actual state of knowledge. The behavioral rules, in analogy to road traffic rules and common sense, regulate the operation of autonomous robots in a manufacturing environment despite their obvious peculiarity. Our rules are the first ones facilitating the orderly and timely flow of vehicles. We show the applicability of Aware in an industrial set up. Overall, we posit that situational awareness is a fundamental element towards functional autonomy and argue that it can provide a reliable basis for organizing and controlling robots in a smart factory in the near future.

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The Role of Situation Awareness in Assuring Safety of Autonomous Vehicles

Cited by 16 publications

References 3 publications

Testing Autonomous Robot Control Software Using Procedural Content Generation

Testing Autonomous Robot Control Software Using Procedural Content Generation

Safety of Autonomous Cognitive-oriented Robots

AWARE: A Situational Awareness Framework for Facilitating Adaptive Behavior of Autonomous Vehicles in Manufacturing

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