Christian Grante

Techniques and tools for automated safety analysis & decision support for redundancy allocation automotive systems

Recent growth in the area of model-based product development in the automotive industry means that system models in electronic form become increasingly more available as they progressively find more applications in the course of the development process. Such models, Matlab-Simulink models for example, are currently used for simulation, fault injection and source code generation. In our work, the utility of such models is pushed further into a hitherto unexplored area that of safety and reliability analysis. We propose a design process in which techniques for semi-automatic safety and reliability analysis of such models are combined with multi-criteria optimization techniques to assist the gradual development of designs that can meet set reliability and safety targets within pragmatic cost constraints. The proposed process relies on tools to automate some aspects of the design that we believe could be automated and thus simplified without any loss of the creative input in the process by designers.

Acumen : an open-source testbed for cyber-physical systems research

Developing Cyber-Physical Systems requires methods and tools to support simulation and verification of hybrid (both continuous and discrete) models. The Acumen modeling and simulation language is an open source testbed for exploring the design space of what rigorous-but-practical next-generation tools can deliver to developers of Cyber-Physical Systems. Like verification tools, a design goal for Acumen is to provide rigorous results. Like simulation tools, it aims to be intuitive, practical, and scalable. However, it is far from evident whether these two goals can be achieved simultaneously. This paper explains the primary design goals for Acumen, the core challenges that must be addressed in order to achieve these goals, the “agile research method” taken by the project, the steps taken to realize these goals, the key lessons learned, and the emerging language design.

On threat assessment and collision avoidance for articulated machinery in low-speed scenarios

This paper investigates the hypothesis that threat assessment algorithms, developed for passenger cars and modified for articulated vehicles in low-speed scenarios, can be used to avoid a majority of the collision accidents in construction environments. The effect of using a collision avoidance system on a Volvo A25 hauler is investigated in several simulated scenarios with stationary obstacles. It is concluded that the safety benefit is severely limited by the relatively low braking capacity of the machine. Due to the limited capacity, braking manoeuvres must be initiated rather early, therefore steering is more efficient in many situations. Moreover, collisions are difficult to avoid when there is an offset between the machine and obstacle which is likely to occur in unstructured environments. The effect of different driving styles is also analysed and adapting the collision avoidance function to the individual driver can increase the number of collisions prevented. Another possible way to increase the safety benefit is to introduce a safety margin around obstacles. Both these options, however, increase the risk for generating false alarms.

AUTOMATION FOR IMPROVED SAFETY IN ROADSIDE CONSTRUCTION

In this paper, it is investigated how different types of automation would affect the safety for workers in asphalt paving. The risk for the workers on road construction sites is consistently high in comparison to the average risk of the working population. Automation has been suggested as an alternative for improving the safety in roadside construction assuming that removing workers will inherently eliminate the risk of them being injured. In this paper, the potential for improving the safety using automation is analyzed in detail. By investigating accident statistics and understanding the type of accidents that appear, several different automated functions for increased safety are proposed and described. Based on available statistics, it is possible to estimate the safety benefit, as the reduction in fatalities, for several of the proposed functions. The highest safety benefit would be achieved by automating the road traffic driving through the work zones. This has the potential of reducing the total number of road worker fatalities with over 30 %. In addition, it would decrease the number of road traffic accidents in work zones. Automation of construction machinery and dump-trucks also has the potential to increase the safety.