LEVERAGING HIGH-FIDELITY SIMULATION TO EVALUATE AUTONOMY ALGORITHM SAFETY

The age of large autonomous ground vehicles has arrived. Wherever vehicles are used, autonomy is desired and, in most cases, being studied and developed. The last barrier is to prove to decision makers (and the general public) that these autonomous systems are safe. This paper describes a rigorous safety testing environment for large autonomous vehicles. Our approach to this borrows elements from game theory, where multiple competing players each attempt to maximize their payout. With this construct, we can model an environment that as an agent that seeks poor performance in an effort to find the rare corner cases that can lead to automation failure.