Minimum Risk Maneuver Fallback Strategy for Autonomous Vehicles: Design and Experimental Validation

This paper presents a methodology that is auto-matically performed by an Automated Driving System (ADS) to bring the vehicle into a Minimum Risk Condition (MRC), in case the driver does not take the driving task after a take-over demand or after a severe system failure. This procedure is commonly known as Minimum Risk Maneuver (MRM). The interest behind MRM is to ensure vehicle's safety within an automated mode. The current work proposes an MRM methodology for automated vehicles equipped with level 3–5 ADS. It is implemented as a state machine specifying high-level maneuver decisions that are used in the vehicle motion control. The system is simulated in a CarMaker environment, demonstrating its feasibility in ensuring the safety of the vehicle in several failure scenarios. In addition, experimental results on an automated vehicle, robotized by Valeo, are shown to approve the proposed system.