Truths and Myths about Automated Vehicle Safety

#vehicular #technology #cars #self-driving #AutonomousVehicles

Truths and Myths about Automated Vehicle Safety Webinar explores key aspects of safety surrounding automated vehicles and autonomous driving.

The past year has seen both peak hype and significant issues for the automated vehicle industry. In this talk we recap general trends and summarize the current situation for autonomous vehicles such as robotaxis, as well as conventional vehicles that have automated steering features. Many of the issues the industry faces are self-inflicted, stemming from a combination of inflated promises, attempts to scale immature technology too aggressively, and an overly narrow view of safety. Overall, the companies deploying the technology have failed to address legitimate concerns of a wide variety of stakeholders. There are a number of different aspects that still need to be addressed including: legislation, regulation, liability, insurance, driver skills, traffic enforcement, emergency services, vulnerable road users, engineering standards, business models, public messaging, investor pressure, cultural change, ethical/equity concerns, and local oversight. We concentrate on how all these pieces need to fit together to create sustainable automated vehicle technology approaches.

Prof. Philip Koopman is an internationally recognized expert on Autonomous Vehicle (AV) safety whose work in that area spans over 25 years. He is also actively involved with AV policy and standards as well as more general embedded system design and software quality. His pioneering research work includes software robustness testing and run time monitoring of autonomous systems to identify how they break and how to fix them. He has extensive experience in software safety and software quality across numerous transportation, industrial, and defense application domains including conventional automotive software and hardware systems. He is a faculty member of the Carnegie Mellon University ECE department where he teaches software skills for mission-critical systems. 

In 2018 he was awarded the highly selective IEEE-SSIT Carl Barus Award for outstanding service in the public interest for his work in promoting automotive computer-based system safety. He originated the UL 4600 standard for autonomous system safety issued in 2020. In 2022 he was named to the National Safety Council's Mobility Safety Advisory Group. In 2023 he was named the International System Safety Society's Educator of the Year. He is the author of the books: Understanding Checksums & Cyclic Redundancy Codes (2024), How Safe is Safe Enough: measuring and predicting autonomous vehicle safety (2022), The UL 4600 Guidebook (2022) and Better Embedded System Software (2010).