Risk assessment of autonomous vehicles
For the safety assessment of a modern vehicle concept, both active and passive safety elements must be evaluated integrally. While passive safety can be carried out using crash analyses, the active safety features can be determined using risk assessment analyses. Based on a critical situation and the available sensor information, the criticality of safety for a vehicle is determined at the institute of concepts and the integral vehicle safety is calculated in combination with the respective crash performance.
The safety assessment of modern vehicle concepts goes far beyond classic crash analyses. To assess a vehicle holistically, both passive and active safety systems must be considered in their entirety. The importance of the various sensor sets - such as LiDAR, radar and cameras - is therefore also being analyzed at the institute. Each sensor system provides different information about the environment, such as distances, movements or objects, and directly influences the vehicle's ability to recognize critical situations at an early stage.
The combination of analyzing active safety systems and evaluating the crash performance of the vehicle structure enables an integral assessment of vehicle safety. This integral perspective makes it possible to recognize weak points in vehicle concepts at an early stage, improve targeted safety measures and make future autonomous vehicles both safer and more reliable.
To assess criticality, critical scenarios are modelled and analytically evaluated - from complex urban environments with pedestrians and cyclists to high-speed scenarios - in order to derive safe trajectories based on the existing criticality. With the systematic integral assessment of safety risks within critical traffic situations and the derivation of strategies to reduce the potential severity of accidents, the Institute of Vehicle Concepts is helping to increase the safety of autonomous vehicles and thus strengthen confidence in the technology.