Special Issue on Safety and Reliability for Autonomous Vehicles
SAE International Journal of Connected and Automated Vehicles furthers the state of the art of engineering research by promoting high-quality theoretical and applied investigations in the arena of connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) in on-road, off-road, and aerial operational environments. The enormous growth in numbers, diversity, and complexity of CAVs has been driven by: (i) enhancements of fundamental scientific understanding; (ii) technological convergence of computing, communication, and miniaturization; and (iii) increased scale and complexity of tangible embodiments and engineering implementations at the component-, subsystem-, and system-levels.
Automated driving is seen as one of the key technologies that will considerably shape our society and will influence future transportation modes and quality of life, altering the face of mobility as we know it today. Many benefits are expected, ranging from reduced accidents, optimized traffic, improved comfort, social inclusion, lower emissions, and better road utilization due to efficient integration of private and public transport. However, despite tremendous improvements in sensor technology, high performance computing, machine learning, computer vision, data fusion techniques, control system design, and other system technology areas, market introduction of a fully automated vehicle that is capable of unsupervised driving in an unstructured environment remains a long-term goal. Even for well-structured environments, further research is required exploiting the full potential of road transport automation. To be accepted by drivers and other stakeholders, automated vehicles must be reliable and significantly safer than today’s driving baseline. The focus of this special issue is new methods, approaches, and technologies that significantly increase reliability and availability, as well as vehicle and road safety of SAE Level 3+ vehicles in any situation and under any weather condition.