Verifying the safety of lane change maneuvers of self-driving vehicles based on formalized traffic rules

Abstract

Validating the safety of self-driving vehicles requires an enormous amount of testing. By applying formal verification methods, we can prove the correctness of the vehicles' behavior, which at the same time reduces remaining risks and the need for extensive testing. However, current safety approaches do not consider liabilities of traffic participants if a collision occurs. Utilizing formalized traffic rules to verify motion plans allows this problem to be solved. We present a novel approach for verifying the safety of lane change maneuvers, using formalized traffic rules according to the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic. This allows us to provide additional guarantees that if a collision occurs, the self-driving vehicle is not responsible. Furthermore, we consider misbehavior of other traffic participants during lane changes and propose feasible solutions to avoid or mitigate a potential collision. The approach has been evaluated using real traffic data provided by the NGSIM project as well as simulated lane changes.