Showing posts with label UL 4600. Show all posts
Showing posts with label UL 4600. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 30, 2022

The UL 4600 Guidebook


The UL 4600 Guidebook:
What to Include in an Autonomous Vehicle Safety Case

Book cover

ANSI/UL 4600 is the most comprehensive standard for highly automated vehicle safety, applying to any vehicle in which a human driver can take their eyes off the road. It provides a way to check the completeness and correctness of a safety case that spans a broad range of concerns related to safety, including design, deployment, and lifecycle support. There is a special emphasis on computer hardware and software, as well as operational concepts and interaction with other road users. While other relevant standards can and should be used as well, UL 4600 provides an umbrella to make sure things don’t get missed for assuring safety.

This book, written by the author of the original UL 4600 standard proposal, serves as a high-level guided tour. Early chapters provide historical context, a description of the distinctive UL 4600 prompt element approach, a discussion of key terms, and how a safety case works in the context of the standard. Then comes a chapter-by-chapter tour of UL 4600, explaining overall concepts and how all the pieces fit together for each area covered by the standard, from safety cases to hazard analysis to assessment. This book will help technical readers prepare for diving into the nitty gritty of the standard, as well as provide a more accessible discussion for those who want to understand what UL 4600 covers at a higher level. The last chapter provides pointers to further information, including how you can view the current version of UL 4600 for free.

This is a comparatively short (about 100 pages of main content) trade paperback (6"x9") discussion of a much longer, fairly complex standard. So think of it as a tour guidebook and not a textbook.

Currently available for purchase from Amazon, with international distribution via their print-on-demand network. (See country-specific distribution list below.)

eBook available from Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/pkoopman

Available from Barnes & Noble and some US and UK book distributors: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/philip%20koopman

Media coverage and bonus content:

Chapters:

  1. Introduction
  2. Overview and applicability of UL 4600
  3. Requirements and prompt elements
  4. Terminology
  5. The safety case
  6. Hazards and risks
  7. Interaction with people and road users
  8. Autonomy functions and support
  9. Software & system engineering process
  10. Dependability
  11. Data and networking
  12. Verification, validation, and test
  13. Tools, COTS, and legacy qualification
  14. Lifecycle concerns
  15. Maintenance
  16. Safety Performance Indicators
  17. Assessment
  18. Wrap-up
138 pages.

Koopman, P., The UL 4600 Guidebook: What to Includes in an Autonomous Vehicle Safety Case, November 2022.
ISBN: 9798365303065  Trade Paperback
ISBN: 9798365303249  Hardcover   (available only in marketplaces supported by Amazon)
ASIN: B0BNLVC22J  Kindle ebook


For those asking about distribution -- it is served by the Amazon publishing network. Expanded distribution is selected, so other distributors might pick it up in 6-8 weeks to serve additional countries (e.g., India) or non-Amazon booksellers, especially in US and UK. How that goes is beyond my control, but in principle a bookstore anywhere should be able to order it by about mid-January 2023. Alternately, you can order it direct from Amazon in the closest one of these countries for international delivery: US, UK, DE, FR, ES, IT, NL, PL, SE, JP, CA, AU.


Your local bookstore should also be able to order it through their US or UK distributor. starting in mid-January.

If you are not in a listed country:
  • For printed books you can probably order it from a nearby country for international shipment.
  • For Kindle ebook what matters is what country your kindle is registered for, which is not necessarily your physical location.

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Sunday, November 13, 2022

Book: How Safe is Safe Enough? Measuring and Predicting Autonomous Vehicle Safety

How Safe Is Safe Enough for Autonomous Vehicles? 
The Book


The most pressing question regarding autonomous vehicles is: will they be safe enough? The usual metric of "at least as safe as a human driver" is more complex than it might seem. Which human driver, under what conditions? And are fewer total fatalities OK even if it means more pedestrians die? Who gets to decide what safe enough really means when billions of dollars are on the line? And how will anyone really know the outcome will be as safe as it needs to be when the technology initially deploys without a safety driver?

This book is written by an internationally known expert with more than 25 years of experience in self-driving car safety. It covers terminology, autonomous vehicle (AV) safety challenges, risk acceptance frameworks, what people mean by "safe," setting an acceptable safety goal, measuring safety, safety cases, safety performance indicators, deciding when to deploy, and ethical AV deployment. The emphasis is not on how to build machine learning based systems, but rather on how to measure whether the result will be acceptably safe for real-world deployment. Written for engineers, policy stakeholders, and technology enthusiasts, this book tells you how to figure out what "safe enough" really means, and provides a framework for knowing that an autonomous vehicle is ready to deploy safely.

Currently available for purchase from Amazon, with international distribution via their print-on-demand network. (See country-specific distribution list below.)

See bottom of this post for e-book information, from sources other than Amazon, as well as other distributors for the printed book.

Media coverage and bonus content:

Chapters:

  1. Introduction
  2. Terminology and challenges
  3. Risk Acceptance Frameworks
  4. What people mean by "safe"
  5. Setting an acceptable safety goal
  6. Measuring safety
  7. Safety cases
  8. Applying SPIs in practice
  9. Deciding when to deploy
  10. Ethical AV deployment
  11. Conclusions
368 pages.
635 footnotes.
On-line clickable link list for the footnotes here: https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~koopman/SafeEnough/

Koopman, P., How Safe Is Safe Enough? Measuring and Predicting Autonomous Vehicle Safety, September 2022.
ISBN: 9798846251243 Trade Paperback
ISBN: 9798848273397 Hardcover   (available only in marketplaces supported by Amazon)

Also see my other recent book: The UL 4600 Guidebook

For those asking about distribution -- it is served by the Amazon publishing network. Expanded distribution is selected, so other distributors might pick it up in 6-8 weeks to serve additional countries (e.g., India) or non-Amazon booksellers, especially in US and UK. How that goes is beyond my control, but in principle a bookstore anywhere should be able to order it by about mid-November 2022. Alternately, you can order it direct from Amazon in the closest one of these countries for international delivery: US, UK, DE, FR, ES, IT, NL, PL, SE, JP, CA, AU.


You can also buy it from some Amazon country web sites via distributors. A notable example is:

Your local bookstore should also be able to order it through their US or UK distributor.

E-book available from distributors as they pick it up over time: 

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Tuesday, March 15, 2022

ANSI/UL 4600 Version 2 (2022)

Version 2 of ANSI/UL 4600 has just been issued. This standard provides guidance on how to ensure that autonomous vehicles safety cases are created and maintained to ensure acceptable safety for deployment.


Since version 1 of the standard was issued in April 2020, the Standards Technical Panel members (the voting committee) and stakeholders have been involved in suggesting clarifications, upgrades, and other improvements as part of the standard's continuous improvement process. 

Version 1 of the standard included chapters on: terminology, safety cases, risk assessment, interaction with humans, autonomy functions, software/system engineering processes, dependability, data/networking, verification/validation/test, tool qualification/COTS/legacy components, lifecycle concerns, maintenance, metrics, and assessment. The standard is designed to work with other safety standards such as ISO 26262 and ISO 21448 to make sure that all the bases are covered for system-level safety on autonomous road vehicles.

Version 2 has some substantive changes:

  • The assessment terminology and role of independent assessment have been changed. This is compatible with the previous approach except that the independent assessor has a more substantive role.
    • Self-assessment: the development team creates and vets its own safety case.
    • Independent assessment: an independent organization examines both the form and the technical substance of the safety case to ensure it is acceptable.  (This independent organization might be within the same company at an arms-length relationship, or could be an external assessor at the company's option.)
  • Significant clean-up of the discussion of safety case terminology and structure. This is overall a significant improvement of the ideas that were already there in version 1, but a lot of work went into this area.
  • The terminology section has been substantially rewritten to clean up wording and improve alignment with other standards without substantively changing the intended meaning of terms being used.
Version 2 maintains the same structure as Version 1 with some minor changes to top level requirements. Significant attention has been paid to ensure a smooth transition between versions. While much of the document has been updated, the updates beyond the substantive changes tend to be relatively minor in scope and are more in the nature of clarification and adding helpful detail. The changes significantly improve the standard, but the vast majority do not fundamentally change its nature or general requirements.

Overall there were seven different task groups whose members spent many hours contributing to improving the standard, and there are important changes in each area to improve the standard.  Those task groups drafted proposals to modify content regarding: safety cases, faults/hazard/risks, assessment, sensor requirements, object tracking, safe egress, and terminology. 

Everyone who participated deserves a big "Thank You!"  Also, a special thanks to Deborah Prince and Heather Sakellariou at Underwriters Laboratories for coordinating all the activities and keeping everything on track, especially with the challenges presented by the whole process being done electronically via e-mail and on-line meetings. It has truly been a pleasure to work with a group that is so dedicated to this collaborative effort to ensure the safety of autonomous vehicle technology.

The official kickoff of UL 4600 version 3 is planned for April, with the biggest goal being extending the standard to cover special considerations that apply to autonomous heavy trucks. Anyone interested in contributing to that discussion can request stakeholder status (no participation fee required).

You can find a pointer to a copy of the newly released version 2 including FREE (with free digital account) digital access to a full copy of the standard, a list of committee members, and more here: https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~koopman/ul4600/index.html 

The official news release from the standards organization is here: https://ul.org/standards-and-engagement/presenting-standard-safety-evaluation-autonomous-vehicles/second-edition 



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