Safety-Relevant Scenarios for Teleoperated Driving of Highly Automated Vehicles (SAE Level 4) in the Context of Public Transport

Abstract

Until fully automated driving (SAE level 5) will be achieved, there is still a long way to go. However, interim technologies may speed up the market introduction of highly automated vehicles (AVs). Teleoperation has the potential to enable a safe transition towards fully automated vehicle operation, especially for complex scenarios the automation cannot cope with yet (SAE level 4). Since maintaining safe and efficient operations is essential for the success of automated driving, the objective of this presentation is the creation of a comprehensive list of potentially safety-relevant scenarios that may require a human intervention. Once established, this list can be used to derive needs and requirements for teleoperation. Relevant actors in the field of teleoperation such as public research facilities, public transportation companies, industrial R&D departments, as well as decision makers will be identified. Outcomes from national and international projects will be investigated. In addition, existing legal sources, such as the German Bus Drivers Service Act, and upcoming regulations on remote-operation in the context of automated driving, for example, the SAE Level 4 Act in Germany that specifies the legal framework for teleoperation by a “Technical Supervisor” will be analyzed. Taking these sources into account, a catalogue of scenarios that have to be considered from a human factors perspective to teleoperate AVs safely in public transport will be created. This catalogue will be validated through a questionnaire-based interview in which a group of experts from public transportation facilities and associations as well as potential end users will mainly rate two properties of any given scenario: (1) the probability for a scenario’ s occurrence, i.e., how frequently the scenario will occur in the future, and (2) the criticality for safe teleoperation, i.e., how relevant the scenario is for providing security to the AV’s passengers as well as to other traffic participants. Finally, based on expert and user ratings, both a frequency and a criticality score will be calculated. From that, an overall priority level will be derived for any scenario. This priority classification will help to understand the pivotal challenges of teleoperation regarding security and will assure to address them effectively. Identifying and addressing the most pressing challenges of teleoperated driving pave the way to using automated driving technologies in the near future already. Describing and classifying scenarios relevant to this will facilitate future users’ acceptance of the technology and provide needs and requirements for a safe, effective, and intuitive human-machine interface (HMI) design for teleoperated driving in the context of public transport. This catalogue of scenarios will be created for this study but can be used for subsequent research in the context of teleoperation as it will cover a typical set of scenarios that address the core challenges and requirements of this interim technology. It could also be converted into a checklist for assessing the quality of a workstation of teleoperation from a human factors perspective: Only if the HMI is capable of coping with all scenarios mentioned, it will provide a viable solution to smooth interaction between man and machine. Further research will refine the catalogue presented here and consider methods for evaluation and validation of the scenarios it is comprised of.