Research Report
Unsettled Domains Concerning Autonomous System Validation and Verification Processes
2019-12-20
EPR2019012
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Department of Transportations' (DOT's) National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) face similar challenges regarding the regulation of autonomous systems powered by artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms that replace the human factor in the decision-making process. The validation and verification (V&V) processes contribute to the implementation of the correct system requirements. The V&V process is one of the steps of a development lifecycle starting with the definition of regulatory, marketing, operational, performance, and safety requirements. They define what a product is, and they flow down into lower level requirements defining control architectures, hardware, and software. The industry is attempting to define regulatory requirements and a framework to gain safety clearance of such products.