A new Taxonomy for Automated Driving: Combining SAE Level, ODD and TRL (IV'24)

The aim of this paper is to investigate the relation- ship between operational design domains (ODD), automated driving SAE Levels, and Technology Readiness Level (TRL). The first highly automated vehicles, like robotaxis, are in com- mercial use, and the first vehicles with highway pilot systems have been delivered to private customers. It has emerged as a crucial issue that these automated driving systems differ significantly in their ODD and in their technical maturity. Con- sequently, any approach to compare these systems is difficult and requires a deep dive into defined ODDs, specifications, and technologies used. Therefore, this paper challenges current state-of-the-art taxonomies and develops a new and integrated taxonomy that can structure automated vehicle systems more efficiently. We use the well-known SAE Levels 0-5 as the ”level of responsibility”, and link and describe the ODD at an intermediate level of abstraction. Finally, a new maturity model is explicitly proposed to improve the comparability of automated vehicles and driving functions. This method is then used to analyze today’s existing automated vehicle applications, which are structured into the new taxonomy and rated by the new maturity levels. Our results indicate that this new taxonomy and maturity level model will help to differentiate automated vehicle systems in discussions more clearly and to discover white fields more systematically and upfront, e.g. for research but also for regulatory purposes.

[@TheDiplomat27]

Very interesting. You recognize that the SAE level alone is not enough to fully describe an AV. I like the idea of combining the SAE level with an ODD and a tech readiness level. That adds more useful info than just the SAE level. My only feedback would be that some of the codes, like for the ODD, do not seem very intuitive. I feel like people might have trouble understanding what 4|US|*|H+|NR|v4|none|ADR6 means unless they have memorized the codes or have a cheat sheet of the codes. Also Waymo can do fog now in their ODD so I think their ODD code should be NRF, not NR.