FMVSS 126 Sine with Dwell ESC Regulation Test for Autonomous Vehicles 2019-01-1011

Electronic stability control (ESC) has been an essential part of road vehicle safety for almost three decades. In April of 2007, the United States federal government issued a regulation to test the validity of ESC in development vehicles, and the regulation is called Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) 126 in North America (NA), and an equivalent test in other countries outside of NA called ECE13-H (Economic Commission for Europe). While these standards have been used to certify ESC in development passenger cars for over a decade, this has not yet been scrutinized for the application of autonomous vehicles. Autonomous cars have sensors and control systems which can be used to improve ESC, where commercial standard vehicles do not. In this manuscript, we explored how an autonomous vehicle could complete the FMVSS 126 regulation, on its own, without a human driver, and discussed whether the FMVSS 126 (also called Sine with Dwell) test remains a useful regulation for autonomous cars. Additionally, we described a potential general obstacle avoidance capability assessment (GOACA) which could be a better system-level regulation applied to assure the safety of autonomous cars in avoiding obstacles. This proposed assessment would test the sensing and recognition of obstacles in the car’s path, in addition to its control and handling ability to maneuver safely around the object. The summary of potential maneuvers and metrics for this GOACA are enumerated in this manuscript, while details for application are saved for future work.