Enhancing Safety and Performance of Autonomous Systems in Open Contexts Through the Layers of Protection Architecture (LOPAAS)

Safety engineering and assurance of autonomous systems involve many research challenges. Key challenges stem from the complex environment in which autonomous systems should behave flexibly, performatively, and safely. Conventional safety based on worst-case assumptions cannot reach the required performance and can even contribute to hazardous situations. For instance, an autonomous vehicle that keeps a too large distance to its vehicle in front might cause other vehicles to cut in. In this paper, we provide an overview of the layers of protection architecture for autonomous systems (LOPAAS), which deals with this issue by dynamically adapting safety restrictions to meet the current situation's safety and performance demands. We illustrate the application of our framework with a highway pilot use case and discuss the safety and performance benefits of LOPAAS using this example.