Foretellix, an Israeli based start-up attempting to enable measurable safety of AVs, has developed what it claims is the first open language standard that addresses multiple shortcomings of current formats, languages, methods and metrics used to verify and validate AV safety.
The company says it has opened its measurable scenario description language (M-SDL) to the ADAS and AV ecosystem and contributed the language concepts to the Association for Standardization of Automation and Measuring Systems (ASAM) standards committee.
Foretellix also announced its M-SDL Partners Program, providing a mechanism for industry feedback and refinement of M-SDL.
A partial list of members includes AVL List, Volvo Group, Unity Technologies, Horiba Mira, TÜV SÜD, Automotive Artificial Intelligenc , Metamoto, Vector Zero, Trustworthy Systems Lab of Bristol University, and Advanced Mobility Institute of Florida Polytechnic University.
According to Foretellix, it developed M-SDL because “safety methods and metrics based on quantity of miles driven in simulation and road testing, the number of disengagements, and/or test coverage, are insufficient, non-scalable, and not easily shared or reused”.
In addition, Foretellix believes that, “due to the uncontrollable behaviour of AVs and traffic, developers cannot be sure their tests are actually orchestrating desired scenarios or evaluating test coverage as intended”.
What’s more, the company claims “none of these techniques offer adequate mechanisms to identify previously unknown hazardous edge case scenarios nor aggregate coverage metrics across all virtual and physical testing platforms”.
However, by opening and contributing M-SDL, Foretellix says “tool vendors, suppliers and developers will be able to use a common, human readable, high level language to simplify the capture, reuse and sharing of scenarios; easily specify any mix of scenarios and operating conditions to identify previously unknown hazardous edge cases; and monitor and measure the coverage of the autonomous functionality critical to prove AV safety, independent of tests and testing platforms”.
Ziv Binyamini, CEO of Foretellix, said: “The ability to achieve measurable safety of AVs is still being limited by a lack of standards, methods and metrics that inhibit reuse and sharing, are insufficient and/or non-scalable.
“We believe in an open ecosystem and open standards, and are actively supporting ASAM in its efforts to create an open language standard.”
