Lab Environments for Increasing the Technological Readiness of Safety Assurance Methods in AD

Exploring and evaluating the applicability of Safety Assurance Methods (SAMs) on full-scale systems requires high cost, extensive time investments, and significant resource commitment. Thus, the development and validation of SAMs for Automated Driving Systems (ADSs) face significant challenges. As a result, while ADSs continuously mature to higher Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs), novel SAMs emerging from academia struggle to surpass TRL2. In this paper, we propose the concept of a Methods Exploration Laboratory (MEL) using a scaled system as a less resourceintensive alternative for an initial application of novel SAMs to address these challenges and enable TRL3-4. This approach facilitates rapid prototyping and iteration of SAMs while maintaining essential features necessary for comprehensive validation. Requirements for the MEL are outlined, ensuring the applicability and evaluation of SAMs currently being developed to efficiently provide meaningful feedback for method developers. A feedback cycle is proposed, allowing iterative refinement of SAMs by comparing performance against state-of-the-art reference SAMs. The potential benefits of the MEL are discussed and weighted against the inherent limitations of using a laboratory environment. While shortcomings of SAMs can be identified and corrected, the MEL may not capture all potential failure modes or edge cases encountered by using the relevant environment of a full-scale ADS for SAM evaluation. However, despite identified constraints, the MEL poses a novel type of tool to enable feedback in early stages of the development process. In conclusion, the proposed concept represents a significant advancement in SAM development, offering a more accessible, controllable, and resource-efficient tool to reach the next intermediary step for the technological readiness of SAMs. Future research is required for the realization of the MEL to explore the adaptability to different types of SAMs and ADS configurations.