Intelligent Vehicle Source (Ivsource.net) - Dutch TNO Develops Methodology to Establish the Safety of Automatic Vehicles

TNO has developed a way to establish the safety of automatic vehicles used to transport people and goods. Some form of certification process is needed so that automatically guided vehicles can be widely deployed for public use.

Any new car model that a manufacturer wishes to put on the road in Europe needs a formal type approval. This poses a problem for manufacturers of automatically guided vehicles (AGVs) destined for the road: vehicles without a driver are “orphans” in terms of any covering legislation. Current legislation does not allow vehicles to operate on public roads without a driver. (TNO defines AGVs as a fleet of road vehicles with fully automated driving capabilities, powered by clean energy, managed by a central computer system, providing door-to-door, on-demand transport.)

What is more, according to TNO, there are as yet no special safety standards for such vehicles and transport systems. In other words, neither manufacturer nor owner nor legislative body has any guidelines for establishing whether such a vehicle is sufficiently safe. Naturally, this is an obstacle to the continued development and use of AGVs. These issues have been addressed to some degree in the European CyberCar and CyberMove projects.

TNO has now developed a method for evaluating whether an AGV achieves a certain safety level. This method, based on Failure Modes, Effects and Criticality Analysis (FMECA), focuses on the integrated system rather than individual parts. TNO notes that it makes little sense to evaluate, for instance, obstacle detection or radio contact with the central control computer individually, item by item. Only by assessing the system as a coherent whole can, for example, lack of familiarity concerning the performance of the obstacle detection laser be prevented from prompting decision errors being made in respect of vehicle management and, therefore, safety. In fact, the environment in which the transport system will function also has to be incorporated in the risk analysis.

According to the May 2004 issue of Transport Matters, published by TNO Traffic and Transport, the method was recently used to evaluate the safety of the FROG ParkShuttle and Yamaha’s CyberCab. Both have seen use in public service, in specialized environments. The evaluation produced positive results for both systems, in terms of safety robustness. Further, the method has been modified and improved, based on these first experiences.

Using this method, AGV producers can establish whether their vehicle is sufficiently safe and also identify any ares needing improvement. The TNO method can also form the basis for future legislation in this field and for new pilot projects.

More information is available at the TNO Traffic and Transport website.