A Conceptual Control System Description of Cooperative and Automated Driving in Mixed Urban Traffic With Meaningful Human Control for Design and Evaluation

Simeon C Calvert,Giulio Mecacci

doi:10.1109/ojits.2020.3021461

Abstract

The introduction of automated vehicles means that some or all operational control over these vehicles is diverted away from a human driver to a technological system. The concept of Meaningful Human Control (MHC) was derived to address control issues over automated systems, allowing a system to explicitly consider human intentions and reasons. Applying MHC to technological systems, such as automated driving is a real challenge, and the main focus of this article. An approach with mathematical elaboration has been developed that offers a first quantifiable operationalisation of MHC for the traffic domain and for use with automated vehicles. A major contribution lies in the taxonomification of control for MHC in the broader traffic environment, including consideration of the driver, the vehicle, the traffic environment, considering behaviour, moral standards and societal values, which are considered in a case study. The demonstration case shows the validity of the developed approach for an automated vehicle overtaking a cyclist on an urban street. This article is one of the first to operationalise MHC to such a level of detail and opens the door to further development of the concept for technological implementation.

Highlights

W ITH the rise of automated vehicles in recent years and the expected introduction of cooperative, connected and automated vehicles (CAV) in the coming years, there has been much discussion in regard to safety and the required level of development for deployment on roads [1]
With challenges of increased vehicle automation and questions regarding sufficient control of these vehicles, this article has presented an elaboration of the operationalisation of Meaningful Human Control (MHC), as a control concept that can address many control issues in Cooperative and Automated Driving (CAD)
Operationalisation of a philosophical control concept is challenging for a number of reasons that have been addressed in this article

Summary

INTRODUCTION

W ITH the rise of automated vehicles in recent years and the expected introduction of cooperative, connected and automated vehicles (CAV) in the coming years, there has been much discussion in regard to safety and the required level of development for deployment on roads [1]. The control iteration update runs in time within a single experience k and updates the desired distance between the vehicle and cyclist wveh−cyc and the desired speed v of the ego-vehicle This update is performed by maximisation of the reasons to act (RTsafe, Rsdur) to aim to maximise MHC. This positively impacts on the strategic duration reason and is made possible by a greater degree of safety and capacity of the ego-vehicle in the initial time intervals Throughout the experiment, it emerged that the choice of ego-vehicle speed vk remained inferior to the distance to the cyclist in the optimisation process and did not deviate from the desired speed for acceptable parameter values.

DISCUSSION

CONCLUSION