Bridging AV verification and AV regulation

Summary: In this post I’ll describe my impressions from the ASAM OpenSCENARIO workshop. I’ll then use that as an excuse to discuss a related topic: Many people agree that scenarios are a good way to check Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) for safety. Some of these people have thorough verification in mind, while others have regulation in … More Bridging AV verification and AV regulation

Misc stuff: A Michigan conference, and some overviews

Hi folks I have been too busy lately to even write an occasional “I am too busy” post. Still, here are some quick links: Novi, Michigan conference: I am going to present at the Autonomous Vehicles Test and Development Symposium next week. Also, we (Foretellix) are going to show our stuff in the co-located expo. … More Misc stuff: A Michigan conference, and some overviews

Stuttgart impressions: Scenarios and problems

Summary: This post talks about scenarios as the main tool for serious Autonomous Vehicles verification, but mostly about the more “mechanical” obstacles standing in the way of industrial-scale usage of scenarios – those related to repeatability, HIL issues and behavior stability As promised, here is my (first) report from this year’s Stuttgart Autonomous Vehicle (AV) … More Stuttgart impressions: Scenarios and problems

The Uber accident and the bigger picture

Summary: This post discusses the influence of the Uber accident on Autonomous Vehicle (AV) deployment. It claims that AVs should eventually be deployed, and yet that we should expect many fatal AV accidents. It then suggests that a comprehensive, transparent verification system could help solve this inevitable tension. That tragic Uber accident has brought AV … More The Uber accident and the bigger picture

How to write AV scenarios (and some notes about Pegasus)

Summary: There are several approaches for verifying that Autonomous Vehicles are safe enough. The Pegasus project is one interesting, thoughtful attempt to do that (focusing initially on highly automated driving, not AVs). In this post I’ll summarizes a recent Pegasus symposium, and describe what I like about the approach and what is perhaps still missing. … More How to write AV scenarios (and some notes about Pegasus)

Verifying how AVs behave during accidents

Summary: This post talks about the somewhat-unpopular topic of how Autonomous Vehicles should behave during (and directly after) unavoidable accidents, and especially how to verify that. AV accidents are clearly going to happen: Even the best driver in the world is not guaranteed to never have accidents. This is largely due to, ahem, all the … More Verifying how AVs behave during accidents

On Mobileye’s formal model of AV safety

Summary: This short post talks about Mobileye’s new paper (regarding a formal approach to Autonomous Vehicles safety). It claims that the paper has several issues, but is nevertheless an important start. Mobileye came out with a paper titled “On a Formal Model of Safe and Scalable Self-driving Cars” (Bloomberg coverage, summary paper, full pdf). Their … More On Mobileye’s formal model of AV safety

Using program induction for verification

Summary: I discussed before (e.g. here) how connecting rule-based verification to the rule-less, amorphous Machine Learning world is really hard, and yet necessary. The current post talks about a somewhat-exotic technique called Program Induction (PI), and how it might (eventually) help bridge that gap. What’s program induction Background: I always liked the idea of synthesizing … More Using program induction for verification