At CES 2019 in Las Vegas, Valeo signed a partnership agreement with Mobileye to develop and promote a new autonomous vehicle safety standard based on Mobileye’s RSS (Responsibility-Sensitive Safety) mathematical safety model. The goal: widespread industry adoption.
RSS formalises human notions of safe driving into a verifiable model with logically provable rules and defined responses. It’s a prescriptive model that doesn’t rely on accumulated driving history to teach safety, and Mobileye say it’s a technology-neutral starting point for the industry in figuring out what it means for an AV to drive safely.
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Valeo CEO Jacques Aschenbroich said “Valeo will support and collaborate on RSS, aiming at reaching the best level of safety standard for AVs”, citing the supplier’s “compelling expertise and experience in AVs, genuine priority on safety, sensors and perception systems of the vehicle”. Other entities in the AV sphere have adopted RSS or are considering it—an example is Baidu for their Apollo Project, the first open AV platform (in which Valeo also are participating). Governments and industry alike are recognizing RSS as a key model for AV and higher level ADAS safety.
The auto industry has become increasingly vocal about the need for a strong, transparent and technology-neutral standard for AV Safety. RSS proposes a predetermined set of rules to rapidly and conclusively evaluate and determine responsibility when AVs or ADAS-equipped vehicles are involved in collisions with human-driven cars to set clear rules for fault in advance, based on a mathematical model. If the rules are predetermined, then the investigation can be very short and based on facts, and responsibility can be determined conclusively. It’s hoped this will bolster public confidence in AVs when such incidents inevitably occur and clarify liability risks for consumers and the automotive and insurance industries.
Valeo and Mobileye will collaborate on policies and technologies needed to bolster the adoption of an RSS-based technology standard in Europe, the U.S. and China. The partnership will include drafting of frameworks for the verification and commercial deployment of safe AVs, funding of public research on the RSS model, contributing to draft standards and participation in key committees and working groups in designated standards organisations.
