Re-imagining ISO 26262 in the Age of Autonomous Vehicles: Enhancing Controllability through Transferability and Predictability
Chaitanya Shinde, Hadi Hajieghrary, Paul Schmitt, Adam Shoemaker, Bodo Seifert, Steve Kenner
Why It Matters
What makes this one worth your time
As autonomous vehicles become more prevalent, adapting safety standards like ISO 26262 is crucial for ensuring their safe integration into society.
This work enhances ISO 26262 by introducing measurable dimensions for assessing AV controllability.
Summary
The paper proposes a re-evaluation of the ISO 26262 standard for functional safety in autonomous vehicles by introducing two measurable sub-concepts, Transferability and Predictability, which enhance the existing framework for assessing controllability in the absence of a human driver.
Key contributions
- Decomposes Controllability into Transferability and Predictability, providing a clearer assessment framework.
- Introduces a mathematical framework to quantify Predictability based on human-robot interaction principles.
- Establishes a designed-versus-achievable gap to differentiate between theoretical and practical fallback capabilities.
Notable insights
- The introduction of Transferability and Predictability as measurable dimensions provides a structured approach to assess AV safety mechanisms.
- The mathematical framework for Predictability could facilitate better human-robot interaction in AV systems.
Possible limitations
- Not stated in the abstract.
Abstract
arXiv:2606.07437v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: The ISO 26262 standard defines functional safety for road vehicles through risk assessments based on Severity, Exposure, and Controllability, grounded in a human-driven vehicle paradigm. In the context of autonomous vehicles (AVs), the absence of a human driver necessitates revisiting these principles. This paper decomposes the Controllability placeholder into two auditable evidence dimensions of ISO 26262 by introducing two measurable sub-concepts: Transferability and Predictability. Transferability extends Controllability to capture AV systems' ability to hand off control to dedicated fallback safety mechanisms, while Predictability captures how easily external agents can anticipate AV behavior. Predictability is formally defined from human-robot interaction-inspired principles, and a mathematical framework is provided to quantify it. A designed-versus-achievable gap is introduced to distinguish architectural fallback claims from scene-conditioned achievable fallback capability. The proposed metrics align with ISO 26262 and ISO/PAS 21448 (SOTIF), rendering fallback and interaction claims falsifiable and traceable across ODD slices. These dimensions complement rather than replace existing standards, and the enhancements preserve the structure of ISO 26262 while extending its applicability to driverless automated systems operating at SAE Levels 4 and 5.