Researchers from Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG), part of the University of Warwick, have partnered with German standardisation body ASAM to define an Operation Design Domain (ODD) for connected autonomous vehicles.
An ODD describes specific operating conditions in which the automated driving system is designed to properly operate. It specifies what operating parameters the CAV must be able to manage, for example, weather conditions, infrastructure, location, time of day and everything else that can have an impact on the driving situation.
Thus, the ODD is an important part of the safety concept of a vehicle and must be valid throughout its entire service life for a particular configuration of the CAV.
ASAM and WMG, as well as other international experts, have worked to publish a new international standard concept, to develop a language for defining ODDs. The partnership has successfully created a concept for machine-interpretable format to represent the ODD specification.
The concept paper can be downloaded free of charge, with additional use cases or requirements can still be proposed before the standard development starts.
According to the collaboration, the new format concept enables governments and the automotive industry to access ODD descriptions that are exchangeable, comparable, and processable.
Siddartha Khastgir, from WMG, University of Warwick and project lead for ASAM Open ODD Concept project, said: “Operational Design Domain definition is key to creating a safe automated vehicle. However, how an ODD is defined hasn’t been officially deemed, until now, as the ASAM OpenODD concept has provided the language to define an ODD.
“This means that going forward CAV manufacturers can define, and exchange ODD definitions and authorities can have a common understanding of the ODD definition. I am grateful to all international experts who have contributed to this work. Achieving safety of automated driving needs to be a collaborative effort and ASAM OpenODD is an example of this.”
Furthermore, the team provided an application example of the effective use of ASAM OpenODD. If a city describes the ODD for its downtown area in the ASAM OpenODD format and makes it available to automotive manufacturers. The manufacturers can then use these descriptions to easily match its vehicles with the defined ODD to find out if the vehicles are allowed to drive in the respective downtown area.
Manufacturers can also use the descriptions to map a scenario test catalogue to the requirements of the ODD. The registration authorities have the benefit of defining ODDs that can be used to check autonomous vehicles. It can be used to support the development of the ADAS and AD systems, as the use of the ODD can define the test cases that are necessary to validate the vehicle. There can be limitations, for example, if the vehicle is not capable of speeds above 50 km/h highway tests are not necessary. This application of an ODD helps to focus the limited validation resources on the really needed scenarios.
